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Texas Instruments Q4 update on tap
By Chris Kraeuter, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 9:53 AM ET Dec. 7, 2004

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yhoo/story.asp?source=blq/yhoo&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo&gui...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Texas Instruments hosts a midquarter update after Tuesday's closing bell with its stock price hovering near a six-month high.

TI (TXN: news, chart, profile) shares have accelerated from mid-August when the stock traded at a one-year low of $18.40. Since then, shares have run up 37 percent to $25.29 on industry-wide hopes about strong demand in the fourth quarter and beyond.

The communications and analog chipmaker is expected to earn 26 cents a share on sales of $3.1 billion, on average, for its fourth quarter, according to Thomson First Call.

At the quarter's start, in mid-October, Texas Instruments predicted earnings between 24 and 28 cents a share and sales between $2.96 billion and $3.2 billion.

The company's sales targets represented a range of down 6 percent to up 2 percent from the third quarter, off from a historical average of flat to up 2 percent. During the third quarter, TI earned 32 cents a share on sales of $3.25 billion.

During the fourth quarter last year, TI earned 29 cents a share on sales of $2.77 billion.

Analyst Rick Faust with A.G. Edwards expects TI to earn 25 cents a share on sales of $3.07 billion for the current quarter. In a research note Monday he acknowledged a weak analog chip market, but he expects TI to hit his targets based on the strength of some wireless segments and digital light processors. See previous story about TI's DLP technology.