瑞银财报前瞻点评看好Lam Research与德州仪器AI受益、下调西部数据目标价，属卖方预测而非新增事实

Lam Research ( LRCX ), Texas Instruments ( TXN ), and Western Digital ( WDC ) are set to report quarterly results in short order and UBS believes the trio will benefit from continued artificial intelligence spending. For Lam Research, which reports on Oct. 21, UBS analysts led by Timothy Arcuri believe the chip equipment maker will offer up a “very strong” report and “even more robust” guidance. “Importantly, we now believe semicap co's are increasingly pre-building systems by taking all volumes available at subsystem suppliers — with this dynamic likely to yield upside to what our prior checks suggested (i.e., that SPE companies asked subsystem suppliers to be ready for +/- 10% Q/Q in [wafer fab equipment] shipments over the next quarter),” the analysts wrote in a note. Delving deeper, the analysts said strong products growth guidance from UCT is indicative of strong results from Lam Research. They added they expect Lam's management to up their forecast on 2026 wafer fab equipment spending in the high $150B range and sound “increasingly bullish” for 2027 and maybe even 2028. “In our view, this earnings season for the semicap group (much like last quarter) will be likely less about quarterly numbers, but rather more about capacity expansions and margins trajectory, we would expect LRCX to potentially hint at the addition of a 3rd manufacturing site (after having already announced a 2nd one last quarter, and numerous labs over the past few months),” the analysts added. “We expect LRCX to sound very constructive on the outlook for both its share and market outlook.” The analysts have a Buy rating and $435 price target on Lam Research. Texas Instruments The story is similar for Texas Instruments, which also reports on Oct. 21. “We expect CQ3 revenue and EPS toward the high end of guidance range at $6.05B/$2.48. Into CQ4, we see TXN guiding overall revenue down ~4% Q/Q — better than normal seasonality of down 5-7% Q/Q — and this comes off a CQ3 that will be potentially up >10% Q/Q,” the analysts wrote. “Overall, this would put revenue guidance potentially in the $5.8-5.9B range, above [Wall Street's] ~$5.7B. At the same time, investor sentiment on analog has remained muted despite what could be a quite good setup heading into earnings, with Street only ~200bps above LT seasonality for CQ4 guidance.” In addition, UBS said Texas Instruments could take market share in the analog space as purchases are increasingly worried over shortages and the company has a strong capacity footprint. UBS has a Buy rating and a $380 price target on Texas Instruments. Western Digital Western Digital reports on Oct. 22 and UBS is also expecting better-than-expected results and guidance, as the company “essentially knows what it will ship every Q given its [build to order] construct.” “While we don't see any negative catalysts in the near-term, we find it troubling that the market is taking a more structural view on the HDD industry but not memory,” the analysts said. “We continue to push back on this belief aggressively as we believe there are multiple levers to modeling our projected downcycle in late 2028/early 2029. In fact, we continue to see both WDC and STX (in addition to, of course, Toshiba) starting to buy heads externally from TDK — an evolution to the capacity narrative. Additionally, Toshiba's aspirations in becoming a more competitive player in the DC HDD market could potentially be a major change to the current narrative that there is no new capacity and pricing will just keep moving higher.” The firm kept its Neutral rating on Western Digital, but lowered its price target on the stock to $470 from $525.