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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (44065)	1/20/1999 4:41:00 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

TXN release. At least they were able to stanch the bleeding by "selling" their memory biz to MU. biz.yahoo.com FOCUS - Texas Instruments swing back into the black (Adds stock price, acquisition, earnings details) DALLAS, Jan. 20 (Reuters) - Computer chip maker Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN - news), on Wednesday said it earned $189 million in the fourth quarter, reversing a year-earlier loss, due to strong orders, and expected modest sales growth and higher profits this year. The company, which restructured last year to cut costs and jettison its memory chip business, said it earned $189 million, or 47 cents a share, in the quarter. That compared with a loss of $285 million, or 73 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding one time items, Texas Instruments earned $237 million, or 59 cents a share, surpassing the comparable year-earlier figure of 55 cents a share and beating Wall Street estimates of 54 cents a share. Investors were cheered by the news and pushed up the company's stock price to $97.625, surpassing the record high of $96.50 set last week, on the New York Stock Exchange. It was up $4 at $97 at mid-morning. Overall computer chip, or semiconductor, revenues dropped 6 percent in the quarter to $1.6 billion from $1.7 billion last year, but increased by 6 percent over the third quarter. Semiconductor orders rose 8 percent from the third quarter, reflecting gains across almost all product lines, the company said. The revenue growth was driven by record sales of chips that translate electrical signals from devices such as cellular phones into the digital bits computers can read, or digital signal processing chips. Texas Instruments, which has focused on that business, said the segment's sales in the fourth quarter were up 13 percent from the third quarter for the year were up 29 percent. Texas Instruments said it expected modest sales growth of semiconductors in the first quarter and for the full year due to continued strength in the wireless and hard disk drive computer chip business. ''TI expects 1999 earnings will reflect continued improvement in semiconductor markets and the ongoing benefit of TI's strategic positioning, as well as cost reductions realized from completion of previously announced restructuring actions,'' the company said. In a further move to expand its data signal processing business, Texas Instruments said it planned to buy Butterfly VLSI Ltd. of Israel, which makes chips that enable radio frequency wireless communications, for $50 million. ''TI is a much different company today than we were a year ago,'' said the company's chief executive, Tom Engibous, in a statement. ''We enter 1999 a leader in virtually every market we serve, and we will continue to deliver DSP and analog solutions.'' The company expected to spend $1.1 billion for research and development this year, compared with $1.2 billion in 1998. Capital expenditures this year should remain flat at about $1 billion, the company said, adding 1999 depreciation should run about $1 billion as well. For all of 1998, TI earned $407 million, or $1.02 a share, compared with a net income of $1.8 billion, or $4.54 a share, in 1997. The 1998 results include a range of charges, mostly connected to the company's sale of its memory chip business and cost-cutting program. Revenue for the year fell to $8.5 billion from $9.8 billion.