Topic: Growth Stocks

Texas Instruments Inc. $25 – New York symbol TXN

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC. $25 (New York symbol TXN; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 1.3 billion; Market cap: $32.5 billion; WSSF Rating: Average) makes chips for a wide variety of electronic devices, including mobile phones, DVD players and digital cameras. Chips accounted for 96% of the company’s revenue in 2007. The remaining 4% came from handheld calculators and other products.

The company has more than 50,000 customers, but mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. accounted for 15% of its 2007 revenue.

Nokia now plans to cut its reliance on Texas Instruments for most its chips. However, newer phones use chips that compress processing power into a single chip, instead of spreading these functions across several chips. Texas Instruments is a leading maker of these enhanced chips, so Nokia will likely remain a significant customer.

Texas Instruments will also continue to profit from rising demand for wireless devices that can connect to the Internet. Chips that handle visual data are more complex and require more sophisticated software than regular voice chips. That makes it harder for other chipmakers to enter this field, and lets Texas Instruments charge more for these products.

In the three months ended June 30, 2008, earnings fell 4.2%, to $588 million from $614 million a year earlier. However, per-share earnings rose 4.8%, to $0.44 from $0.42 on fewer shares outstanding. Revenue fell 1.5%, to $3.35 billion from $3.4 billion. The company spent 15% of its revenue on research.

Earnings should reach $1.97 a share in 2008, which implies a p/e of 12.7. The $0.40 dividend yields 1.6%.

Texas Instruments is a buy.

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