Broadcom Inc. isn’t like other chip companies — and that showed in Friday’s analyst reports, which cast the chip and software maker as an outlier of consistency in a turbulent semiconductor market. Late Thursday, Broadcom
AVGO,
+3.25%,
based in San Jose, Calif., reported results and a limited outlook that topped Wall Street estimates, but the company refused to comment on the rest of the year or update analysts on its backlog.
Last quarter, Broadcom said it had about $31 billion in product backlog with lead times of 50 weeks. It declined to update that figure Thursday, indicating that it had omitted any 2023 outlook on purpose and did not want an updated backlog figure treated as an outlook. Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan refused to budge on the analyst call on Thursday, reiterating that he saw 2023 as a growth year and that all orders for the year had already been booked. What sets Broadcom apart from other chip makers, however, is how it manages sales of its product. Other chip makers like Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
+0.93%
have had to cut outlooks repeatedly this year, after a two-year global chip shortage triggered by the pandemic quickly flipped to signs of a glut. As happened in 2019, chip sales again fell off after a big run as chip buyers double- and triple-bought chips they needed in order to lock in prices. That appears to be the case this time around as well, altho …