Some time ago we talked about a relatively brutal turnaround for the PC industry. This situation has manifested itself in a painful way at EK, where 25% of the employees have just been laid off. Corsair is in the same type of company as EK. The brand is aimed at an affluent public, often amateur of DIY and which was clearly weaned these last months for the reasons that we know (graphic cards, price increase, breakages). But the economic reality of companies is that they always have to justify their figures, especially when they are on the stock market, which is the case of Corsair (the company’s shares fell by 11.84% after this communication).
Corsair has thus communicated its turnover for the first quarter of 2022. This is about 380 million dollars, or about 28% less than the first quarter of 2021 . It is also well below the $449.73 million that the company had communicated as a target for the beginning of 2022. Time and time again we’ve seen our industry get it wrong by considering the 2020-2021 period as “normal.” Everyone seems to be settling into a kind of overbidding, whereas the explosion of demand over this period was purely cyclical, not to mention the surge in prices. A situation that will undoubtedly continue well into 2022. Corsair obviously attributes this underperformance to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and to the increase in the cost of raw materials. These events have a real and indisputable impact, but they are not THE main cause.
Our Q1 2022 revenue was below our expectations, mainly due to a short-term slowdown in consumer spending in Europe. As is becoming clear, inflation is higher than expected and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has tested consumer confidence,” said Andy Paul, CEO of Corsair. But the company remains positive in its communication: We are encouraged by many recent reports of GPU prices falling and availability returning to normal, and as we noted in our Investor Day presentations, we expect this to lead to increased GPU activity. So are we in for a real market turnaround or just a violent real world comeback? As you can see, from our side, we are strongly leaning towards the second explanation. Let’s stop comparing the figures of this year 2022 with 2020/2021. Let’s close the parenthesis of madness that has destabilized our market and fattened some profiteers. Let’s take a step back and we will all see that the figures are good, very good but only in the real world.
