ADI ( +7 3/4 @ $63) 11/15 ...maker of high-speed communications chips said fiscal fourth-quarter profit more than doubled.
The company also announced that it may buy back 4 percent of its shares.
Its shares rose $7.75 to close at $63.25 on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has risen 36 percent this year.
Analog Devices, whose chips are used in wireless phones, digital cameras, DVD players and other electronic devices, is gaining share from rival Texas Instruments in the market for digital signal processors (DSPs), analysts say. DSPs convert sound and other signals into digital computer language. Texas Instruments is the No. 1 maker of DSPs.
Analog Devices "delivered a spectacular quarter,'' said Richard Whittington, an analyst at Banc of America Securities who has a ''strong buy'' rating on the company. ''And they gave a favorable forward look, better than what investors were expecting.''
The Norwood, Mass.-based company reported Tuesday that net income for the quarter that ended Oct. 28 rose to $199.9 million, or 52 cents a share, from $73.2 million, or 20 cents, in the same period last year. The company was expected to earn 50 cents, the average estimate of analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial.
Sales rose 87 percent to $805.6 million for the quarter, up from $431 million in the same quarter last year.
Analog Devices also said it may buy back as many as 15 million of its shares, about 4 percent of the 356 million outstanding.
Analog Devices expects a fiscal first-quarter profit of 58 cents to 60 cents per share on an increase of 7 percent to 10 percent in sales from the fourth quarter. The company predicts that sales for the fiscal year will rise more than 50 percent to about $3.8 billion.
Chief executive Jerald Fishman said sales will be constrained by the number of chips it is able to make, not by demand.
The company's customers include Ericsson, Nortel Networks and Alcatel. On Monday, Analog Devices said it won a contract to supply cell phone chips to Siemens, one of Europe's biggest cell phone makers |
