Topic: Growth Stocks

This tech stock’s earnings jumped in the latest quarter

Texas Instruments Inc. (New York symbol TXN) makes chips for a wide variety of electronic devices, including cellphones, DVD players, digital cameras and handheld calculators. The tech stock’s chips are also used in other products, ranging from weapons-guidance systems to kidney-dialysis machines.

In the three months ended December 31, 2010, Texas Instruments’ earnings jumped to $942 million, or $0.78 a share. A year earlier, the company earned $655 million, or $0.52 a share. The sale of a product line, and restoring a research and development federal tax credit contributed $0.14 a share to the latest quarterly earnings.

The tech stock’s sales rose 17.3% to $3.5 billion from $3.0 billion. The company saw stronger demand for chips from makers of smartphones and communications gear. That offset lower sales to computer and television makers.

Texas Instruments spent $393 million (or 11.1% of its sales) on research in the latest quarter. That’s up 10.7 % from $355 million (or 11.8% of sales) a year earlier. The company intends to stop making digital signal processors for mobile phones in order to focus on analog chips. (Analog chips convert sound and images into digital signals that computers can understand.) It is currently the third-largest analog chip maker, behind Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. Revenue from analog chips rose 20% in the latest quarter from a year earlier.

The tech stock’s capital spending fell 31.0%, to $301 million from $436 million a year earlier. In 2010, the company built three new factories, including an analog-chip plant in Texas. Its advanced processes will improve chip performance and lower manufacturing costs.

The company used $600 million to buy back 19.5 million of its common shares in the quarter. Texas Instruments has no debt, and holds cash and short-term investments of $3.1 billion, or $2.63 a share.

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