Key Points
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Rambus stock has ridden the AI wave to new all-time highs.
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The company must keep innovating to take maximum advantage of AI for as long as it can.
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It’s risky to forecast ongoing AI growth at rates similar to that in recent years.
Investors are more excited than ever about artificial intelligence, and they’ve plowed huge amounts of capital into AI stocks regardless of their connection to the industry. That has brought some familiar names back into the spotlight after a long hiatus. Rambus (NASDAQ: RMBS) is a great example of a stock that had enjoyed early success in the internet boom of the late 1990s but then largely flown under the radar after the tech bust in the early 2000s. Now, though, investors are taking a second look at the company as it works to use its portfolio of intellectual property to further AI development.
In two earlier articles, you’ve seen how Rambus got back in the limelight and what Rambus’ success has meant for the company financially. This final article for the Voyager Portfolio looks more closely at Rambus’ growth prospects to see whether it’s worthy of investment even at current prices.
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Gloved hand placing a semiconductor chip into a motherboard slot.
Image source: Getty Images.
Capturing exponential growth in AI
Perhaps the most important aspect of Rambus’ growth trajectory to date has been the extent to which artificial intelligence has driven demand for high-performance semiconductor chips. Over time, evolving AI models have been able to consider steadily rising numbers of parameters. But it has been important for memory technology to advance at least as quickly as processor speeds have accelerate, so that access to stored data doesn’t force models to throttle down unnecessarily. Rambus has been instrumental in helping memory performance keep up with AI’s needs.
At the same time, Rambus has been able to take its key technologies and find applications for them in adjacent markets. In addition to memory chips, Rambus has also concentrated on technology in areas like power management, interconnects, security, and clocking. The way these focus areas all interact is evident from the slate of products that Rambus has created for data center applications, where you’ll find components that provide rapid-access memory as well as AI accelerator chips that incorporate quantum-safe cryptography, memory encryption, and root of trust security.
Why Rambus will be part of the AI answer going forward
Plenty of tech companies have been around for a long time, but many investors downplay the value of Rambus’ 35 years’ worth of research and innovation in high-performance computing . From the start, Rambus aimed to take existing products and find innovative ways to make them perform better. Its great success in doing so with memory chips is just one example of how Rambus can stand up to much larger companies in the tech sector and hold its own.
Rambus’ extensive portfolio of intellectual property gives it a vital foundation on which to build new products. Its core expertise in memory interface and interconnect subsystems is in great demand, and its leadership in producing top-performing chips to date has helped Rambus pick up momentum that it can carry far into the future.
Rambus: a higher-risk stock for the Voyager Portfolio
Even with everything going for Rambus right now, it’s still a tough sell for me after its stock has gained so much ground. Rambus shares currently trade at about 18 times revenue and nearly 55 times earnings. Valuation metrics based on free cash flow and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization don’t look much better. The stock has a riskier profile than some other companies that the Voyager Portfolio has included up until now.
Nevertheless, Rambus has shown its ability to change with the times to capture lucrative opportunities. So as part of a diversified portfolio, the memory tech specialist has a place, and I’ll be buying Rambus shares once mandated disclosure and trading guideline periods expire. If Rambus is right about where AI goes from here, the stock could see even greater gains in the years ahead.
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Dan Caplinger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.