Sector KPI Benchmarking: Semiconductors

A peer-benchmarking analysis across 15 S&P 500 semiconductor companies, ranking firms on profitability and valuation rather than headline market cap.

40.9%Avg. EBITDA margin, sector

46.3xAvg. P/E, sector

66.7%Of companies pay a dividend

1.6%Avg. dividend yield, sector

Overview

Built a peer-benchmarking framework for the S&P 500's semiconductor sector, combining profitability (EBITDA margin), valuation (P/E, price-to-book), and dividend policy into a single composite score — the kind of comparative view a corporate strategy or investor-relations team uses to see where a company stands against its direct peers, not just the index.

Method

Python-based pipeline on S&P 500 constituent financials, filtered to the Semiconductors sub-industry (15 companies)
Derived implied revenue and EBITDA margin from reported EBITDA and price-to-sales ratios, backing out revenue where it wasn't reported directly
Built a composite ranking score (z-scored EBITDA margin, inverted P/E, inverted price-to-book) so the ranking rewards profitability and reasonable valuation, not just size

Results

Horizontal bar chart ranking semiconductor companies by composite score — Composite score by company — Micron leads, AMD and Monolithic Power Systems trail.

Scatter plot of P/E ratio versus EBITDA margin, bubble size representing market cap — Profitability vs. valuation, bubble size = market cap. The most attractive names sit toward the upper-left: high margin, low P/E.

Top 5 and bottom 5 by composite score
Company	P/E	EBITDA Margin	Price/Book	Composite Score
Micron Technology (MU)	23.0x	75.6%	11.4	0.83
First Solar (FSLR)	12.6x	44.4%	2.1	0.78
NXP Semiconductors (NXPI)	19.5x	38.4%	5.0	0.44
Analog Devices (ADI)	43.1x	49.9%	5.2	0.41
Qorvo (QRVO)	23.9x	24.3%	2.6	0.23
…
Broadcom (AVGO)	45.6x	58.4%	17.1	−0.06
Nvidia (NVDA)	29.2x	66.4%	24.3	−0.09
Microchip Technology (MCHP)	109.1x	29.4%	6.2	−0.74
Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR)	74.6x	30.6%	15.4	−0.84
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)	121.8x	23.1%	11.6	−1.28

Key Findings

Sector-wide average EBITDA margin is 40.9% (median 36.1%), against an average P/E of 46.3x — high margins, but also priced at a substantial premium to earnings across the group
Micron Technology ranks #1 on the composite score: a 75.6% EBITDA margin at a comparatively modest 23x P/E, standing out from peers trading at much richer multiples for similar or lower margins
Only 66.7% of sector constituents pay a dividend at all, and the average yield across the sector is just 1.6% — capital is overwhelmingly being reinvested rather than distributed
The two lowest-ranked companies on the composite score (AMD, Monolithic Power Systems) combine sub-31% EBITDA margins with P/E ratios above 74x — the clearest gap in this peer set between valuation and underlying profitability

Deliverable

Full analysis delivered as a Jupyter notebook with the ranked comparison table, methodology for the composite score, and supporting charts.