Texas Instruments, the second-largest US chipmaker by sales after Intel, saw strength in its analogue and digital signal processing semiconductors in the fourth quarter, producing revenues in line with Wall Street expectations.
Dallas-based TI reported revenues of $3.56bn, slightly below the $3.58bn midpoint of its updated forecast in December.
Earnings per share of 54 cents, which included a one-cent tax benefit, were slightly ahead of the analyst consensus of 52 cents, surveyed by Reuters Estimates.
Shares rose 2 per cent in after-hours trading to $29.57 on the news. They are down 13 per cent this month and have fallen by 24 per cent in the past six months as TI has been overtaken by Qualcomm as the leading maker of mobile phone chips.
TI makes chips for a wide range of industries, from automotive to consumer electronics, and has sought to emphasise the growth of its analogue chips in converting sound and pictures into digital information.
"Most important to our future performance, we sharpened our focus on analogue with increases in dedicated research and development, sales support and manufacturing capacity," said Rich Templeton, chief executive.
He said TI expected year-over-year growth to accelerate in 2008 in its semiconductor operations.
Fourth-quarter revenues were up 3 per cent on the same quarter in 2006. Sales of digital signal processors and high-performance analogue products were up 12 per cent.
Compared with the third quarter, revenues were down 3 per cent due to the expected seasonal decline in sales of its famous graphing calculators.
The company said it expected revenues of $3.27bn to $3.55bn in the first quarter and earnings per share in the range of 43-49 cents.
Analysts were expecting first-quarter earnings of 45 cents per share on revenue of $3.41bn, according to Reuters Estimates.
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