Avnet is one of the world's largest distributors of electronic components — the middleman that buys chips and parts from hundreds of makers like Texas Instruments, Infineon and Analog Devices and resells them to millions of product manufacturers. It earns a thin margin on ~$22B of parts a year, so its fortunes rise and fall with the electronic-components inventory cycle.
The middleman in the chip chain
Avnet sits between the companies that MAKE chips (Texas Instruments, Infineon, Analog Devices and ~300 others) and the companies that BUILD products with them. It buys parts in bulk, warehouses them worldwide, and resells them — earning a thin margin on huge volume. Its catalog arm, Farnell, does the same for tiny orders to individual engineers.