NXP Manufacturing Facilities in Texas Re-open for Business Following Storm-Induced Shutdown

Recently, NXP Semiconductors N.V announced the re-opening of two of its manufacturing facilities in Austin, Texas. The facilities were temporarily suspended from usual operations because of the damage caused by severe weather conditions last month. The facilities have now resumed regular operations. 

 

NXP owns and operates three wafer fab production facilities in the U.S. Two of these are in Austin, Texas, and the third is in Chandler, Arizona. Image used courtesy of NXP 

 

Resuming Operations 

NXP said that utilities were restored to the facilities in Austin and that the cleanroom areas were found to be safe for staff to return on February 27. NXP staff have been assessing the level of impact on different areas of the facilities and have been recalibrating equipment, as well as repairing the damage. NXP teams are evaluating wafer-level work in process (WIP) to ensure that product quality is not compromised. The storm-induced halt to operations at the Austin facilities has caused roughly 1 month of wafer production to have been lost. 

In a recent press release, President and CEO of NXP, Kurt Sievers, commented: “The weather conditions and utility disruptions the state of Texas experienced last month were truly unprecedented. We are pleased that our Austin facilities have now resumed initial operations and we are making solid progress on our recovery plan designed to return the wafer fabs to pre-storm production levels. We understand the supply disruptions may impact our customers and we are working to ramp to full production while maintaining quality for these complex manufacturing processes. We continue to provide updates to affected customers on a regular basis and are working tirelessly to minimize potential disruption.”

While NXP has stated that they do not think that there has been an impact upon previously communicated revenue guidance for the first quarter of 2021, they believe they can approximate an impact for the second quarter of $100 million. At the end of April, NXP aims to provide further details of financial information for both the first and second quarters in its earnings press release. 

 

NXP Joins S&P 500 Index

In other news, NXP announced that it would be added to the S&P 500 index. The company was officially added to the index on Monday, March 22, 2021. The index is a market-capitalization-weighted index that is composed of the largest U.S. publicly traded companies. Companies that make up the index include Amazon, Walt Disney Company, Tesla, Netflix, Apple, and more.  

In the same news release, President and CEO of NXP Semiconductors, Kurt Sievers, commented: "We are honored to join the esteemed group of global companies that comprise the S&P 500.” Sievers added: "This significant milestone reflects the efforts of our entire global NXP team, dedicated to being the world leader in secure connections for the smarter world, and driving innovation to make lives easier, better, and safer."