Another negative report..From Briefing.com...."NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR (NSM) 15 -1 5/8 No matter how you cut it, its not a great earnings report. When the release came out at 12:46, there was apparently some confusion, reported by CNBC, on the earnings release numbers. NSM lost $0.29 per share, before restructuring charges. First Call estimates were for a loss of $0.49 per share. Generally, First Call and Zacks estimates do not include restructuring charges. Initial reaction to the release was clearly positive as the stock jumped up nearly a full point to trade at $17.50. But when the full press release came out, a fuller, more negative picture was painted. The one-time restructuring charges of $60 million was a little larger than expected; it had previously been announced as between $50 and $55 million. The real problem is that revenue growth appears to be completely gone. First of all, on a year-over-year basis, revenues declined 29% from $719.9 million last year to $510.1 million. On top of that, the book-to-bill ratio, as reported in the release was a lame 1.0, which is an indicator of flat growth. In addition, the company stated "all worldwide regions reported flat or growing orders over the summer quarter, led by southeast Asia, but declined compared with last year." The way this gets interpreted is that Southeast Asia showed some growth, but coming off the Asian crisis, it's probably modest. The complete picture is one of no growth and kind of overshadows the "beats estimates" and, because it doesn't show much robustness, at a time when Wall Street is beginning to look for more robustness in the semiconductor industry, NSM got dumped, and is heading into the close down considerably."
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