NXP Semiconductors CEO Kurt Sievers stole his own first quarter earnings show this week by announcing his retirement from the company after a 30-year career, the last five of which was spent in the top seat at the firm.
Sievers during NXP’s Q1 2025 earnings call Tuesday morning made clear the decision was personal, and didn’t have to do with any internal conflicts at NXP or the external chaos of geopolitics and unstable market dynamics. Rather, he put it in terms likely to inspire both envy and admiration: “I am looking forward to entering the next chapter of my life in good health, taking more time for family, friends and personal passions.”
The announcement, which followed Sievers’ offering of the company’s Q1 highlights, including a $2.84 revenue posting that was slightly above the midpoint of guidance, seemed to catch Wall Street a little by surprise (Bernstein Research Senior Analyst Stacy Rasgon said as much on CNBC), though Sievers is staying for another six months until Rafael Sotomayor, general manager of Secure Connected Edge at NXP and, as of this week, president of the company, takes over as CEO.
One NXP veteran handing the reins to another NXP veteran (Sotomayor has banked 11 years at NXP) is about as smooth a transition as one could hope for, though Sievers is widely respected. He took charge of NXP in the heat of the pandemic in May 2020, and during the last five years has propelled the firm to the forefront of the automotive, IoT, and edge AI chip movements. His efforts helped drive NXP’s stock price up more than 90% over that period; his retirement announcement figured into a roughly 6.5% slide in NXP’s share price Tuesday to just above $183.
Although, some of that drop, and the broader 28% decline in NXP’s stock over the last six months, also probably has something to do with ongoing uneasiness in NXP’s core automotive and industrial IoT markets combined with new uncertainty and instability introduced by the Trump Administration’s attack-retreat-attack tariff program.
Retirement news aside, NXP’s Q1 2025 earnings report, posted Monday, and the follow-up conference call Tuesday offered Sievers huis turn at attempting to decode the current and expected future effect of Trump tariffs.
On that topic, he said, “We are operating in a very uncertain environment, influenced by tariffs with volatile, direct and indirect effects. As of today, the direct impact of the current tariffs is immaterial to our financials. However, the indirect impacts of current tariffs related to future demand and supply chain remains unknown. As of now, we are not seeing any abnormal customer order pull-ins or push-outs which could be associated with the tariffs.”
He further added beyond potential indirect impacts, NXP is seeing some positive trends in its market segments. “These trends include improving distribution and customer backlog levels, as well as stabilized order signals from our direct customers. Additionally, we are experiencing an increase in short-cycle orders, as well as some spot product shortages leading to customer escalations,” he said. “Taken together, these trends have historically been indicative of the early innings of improving cycle dynamics.”
The big “but” implied there is that, as Rasgon himself put it during the earnings call Q&A session when asking Sievers about second half 2025 expectations, “Nobody knows what the hell is going on right now” regarding how tariffs might affect market dynamics for the rest of this year.
NXP did not offer commentary on second half expectations, only an outlook for the current quarter for $2.9 billion in overall revenue, which would be down about 7% year-over-year, but up about 2% from the just completed quarter.
Regarding Q2 expectations for specific segments, Sievers said, “At the midpoint we expect the following trends in our business during quarter two: Automotive is expected to be flat versus quarter tw of 2024, and up in the low single digit percent range versus quarter one of 2025. Industrial and IoT is expected to be down in the mid-teens percent range year on year, and up in the mid-single-digit percent range versus quarter one 2025. Mobile is expected to be down in the mid-single digit-percentage range year on year and on a sequential basis. And finally, Communications Infrastructure and Other is expected to be down in the high-twenties-percent range versus quarter two of 2024 and flat versus quarter one of 2025.”