On the 41.3 million Micron shares Texas Instruments owns:
''We do plan monetize our holdings of Micron securities. That is an objective of ours over a period of time. We could very well be in the early stages of a (dynamic random-access memory chip) cycle so we're going to continue to watch.''
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Texas Instruments' Aylesworth on 3rd-Quarter Results: Comment
10/19/99 10:38:00 AM
Source: Bloomberg News
Dallas, Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The following are comments from Texas Instruments Inc. Chief Financial Officer William Aylesworth on the company's third-quarter results.
Dallas-based Texas Instruments, the biggest maker of chips for cellular telephones, said its profit more than doubled for the second straight quarter. The company has focused on its digital-signal processors and analog chips since selling its computer-memory business to Micron Technology Inc. a year ago.
''We're seeing very strong revenue growth coming from our focused areas of digital-signal processing and analog chips. Those two areas had revenue growth of 25 percent and 24 percent, respectively, in the quarter. It demonstrates that the strategies and the market opportunities for the new TI are really kicking in.
''The outlook for our fourth quarter is for steady sequential growth in our semiconductor business driven by continued strong demand for our DSP and analog products, particularly in the areas of wireless communications. We see that growth continuing strongly as well into the Year 2000.''
On the company's forecast for cell-phone sales:
''The area of wireless communications continues to be very strong. We've raised our estimate for the production of digital phones to a 70 percent growth rate. Previously, we had that at a 60 percent rate. We think that very rapid growth will continue past 1999 as well.
''That's especially important for TI because our DSP chip is the brain in two out of every three cell phones that are produced in the world. This is one of the elements that's providing a lot of the revenue growth that we're seeing.''
On the market for computer hard-disk drives:
''The hard-disk drive market for us is weak, and we expect it to remain weak. Our customers are working through inventories, and there's pricing pressures in that sector. We think that will probably continue.''
On Texas Instruments' venture capital fund:
''We're beginning to see the financial payoff of what continues to be a very strategic activity for TI. We now have investments in 15 or 16 startup companies, all of which are developing new applications for DSPs. Generally, they use the TI DSP platform for their development work.
''We really get two important benefits from this venture capital fund. We continue to be in the middle of all the entrepreneurial new applications for DSP that these companies invent and bring to market, and we get a financial return.
''That was important to us in the third quarter. That financial return was equivalent to about 7 cents a share for us. We think these types of financial returns will continue for us, although they won't be at this level every quarter.''
On the 41.3 million Micron shares Texas Instruments owns:
''We do plan monetize our holdings of Micron securities. That is an objective of ours over a period of time. We could very well be in the early stages of a (dynamic random-access memory chip) cycle so we're going to continue to watch.'' |
