From briefing Com. 12:15 ET ******
NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR CORP. (NSM) 29 1/8 -1 1/2. Shares of supplier of
diversified semiconductor devices are trading lower this morning, even
though the company managed to beat Wall Street estimates with its fiscal
2Q results, excluding charges. According to NSM, it earned $0.46 a
share, excluding acquisition charges for the purchase of Cyrix, three
cents ahead of the First Call estimate, and well above year-ago net of
$0.16 a share. Sales for its core business were up 26% to $640.3 million
as worldwide orders rose 8% from a year-ago led by strong demand for
local area network orders, although its combined sales only increased
4.9% to $719.9 million. Gross margins for the core business rose to
43.6% from 38.3% in the year-ago period, while its combined gross margin
was 39.4%, up from 36.3%. The company also reported progress with its
Cyrix division, although this unit lost $17.8 million in the quarter on
sales of $79.6 million. Nonetheless, NSM is encouraged by developments
at Cyrix as "shipments of the MediaGX processor doubled in the November
quarter over the August quarter." MediaGX will be critical in making the
acquisition of Cyrix successful for NSM as the chip is the only
integrated processor driving the sub-$1,000 PC market segment at the
moment. Despite the improved results, the stock has not done as well
during the past couple of months, trading lower from a high of $42 7/8
reached in early October. This of course is just prior to the Asian
market problems becoming front page news, which only served to drive the
stock lower on concerns that the Far East problems would spill-over onto
to its bottom line. |
