NXP holds on to record sales as automotive bulwark is cooling

NXP has managed to top last year’s record revenue, albeit by a hair: 2023 sales came in at 13.2 billion dollars, 0.5 percent higher than in 2022. It’s a “solid” result, CEO Kurt Sievers said, considering the downturn that pushed many a chipmaker into the red last year. He expects 2024’s bottom line to be roughly flat again, even as NXP’s mainstay market of automotive chips has started to cool.

NXP’s automotive business initially took a tumble after car manufacturers canceled orders following the onset of the pandemic in 2020, only to rebound strongly after it became clear that car sales didn’t drop as dramatically as expected and that the increasing chip content of cars propped up sales. For a while, NXP’s automotive business was all about placating desperate customers and finding as much additional manufacturing capacity as possible.