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Strategies & Market Trends : Market Gems-Trading Strong Earnings Growth and Momentum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (5476)	2/28/2001 6:50:24 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 6445

TI keeps eye on growth faster than chip market By Marcus Kabel DALLAS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Two days after cutting its first-quarter revenue forecast due to the slowing U.S. economy, Texas Instruments Inc.(NYSE:TXN - news) on Wednesday said it still aims to grow revenue faster than the market for its core semiconductor products. Tom Engibous, chairman and chief executive officer of the world's no. 1 maker of chips that power wireless phones, reiterated the long-standing company growth target at a conference for financial analysts. He and other top executives declined to give any forecasts of when business may improve again after a sharp downturn since late last year. Asked how Wall Street should measure TI's performance in the future, Engibous said revenues should rise faster than the overall market for analog chips and digital signal processors (DSPs), its core products that transform real-world signals like sound and light into computer language and back again. ``I think you have to look at TI as a company that grows above the market average in terms of top line, simply because we are playing in a market that grows above what the semiconductor market growth rate is,'' Engibous said. ``We expect to grow above market rates, period,'' he said. Shares of TI closed $0.45 lower at $29.55 on the New York Stock Exchange, down 70 percent for a 52-week high of $99.75 and just $1 above a year-low of $28.55. Engibous did not refer to the company's Monday warning that revenues this quarter would fall 20 percent from the previous quarter, rather than 10 percent as it had forecast last month. Texas Instruments blamed the sales drop on the U.S. economic slowdown, which left cell phone makers and other TI customers sitting on more inventory than they could sell to consumers. Besides wireless phones, TI DSPs and analog chips also power digital-age devices from high-speed modems to DVD players to the sensors that trigger automobile air bags. Engibous said TI would stick by its strategy of focusing on analog and DSP as the technology at the heart of a growing digital market for such devices as high-speed Internet connections, wireless communications and high-resolution TV and movie screens and projectors. Engibous said TI would emerge from the current slowdown stronger and with more market share as competitors falter while it continues researching and producing new chips, helped by a strong balance sheet with over $2 billion in cash from operations last year. ``Never before in a downturn have we increased our R&D spending,'' he said. TI plans to spend $1.7 billion on research and development this year, up from $1.6 billion in 2000. TI's chief operating officer told the conference the company could not say when business might pick up until its customers' inventories are reduced. ``Things are uncertain....We've got to get through this inventory situation in our channel and at out customers, and then we've got to get a sense for what true demand looks like on the other side of that,'' chief operating officer Rich Templeton said.