TMCnet News

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC - 10-Q - Management's discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations
[August 05, 2011]

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC - 10-Q - Management's discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations


(Edgar Glimpses Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The following should be read in conjunction with the Financial Statements and the related Notes that appear elsewhere in this document. All dollar amounts in the tables in this discussion are stated in millions of U.S. dollars, except per-share amounts.

Overview We design and make semiconductors that we sell to electronics designers and manufacturers all over the world. We began operations in 1930. We are incorporated in Delaware, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and have design, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. We have four segments: Analog, Embedded Processing, Wireless and Other. We expect Analog and Embedded Processing to be our primary growth engines in the years ahead, and we therefore focus our resources on these segments.

We were the world's fourth largest semiconductor company in 2010 as measured by revenue, according to an external source. Additionally, we sell calculators and related products.


On April 4, 2011, we announced that we had entered into an agreement to acquire National Semiconductor Corporation ("National"). Under the terms of the agreement, National stockholders will receive $25 in cash for each share of National common stock they hold at the time of closing. On June 21, 2011, National stockholders approved the adoption of the agreement. The acquisition has cleared all antitrust reviews with the exception of China, which is underway. We expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2011 and will fund the acquisition with a combination of available cash and the proceeds of debt issuances, including $3.5 billion of debt securities issued in the quarter.

The National acquisition will bring to TI a portfolio of 12,000 analog products and strong customer design tools, and is consistent with our strategy to grow our Analog business. Upon the close of the transaction, National will become part of TI's Analog segment.

Product information Semiconductors are electronic components that serve as the building blocks inside modern electronic systems and equipment. Semiconductors come in two basic forms: individual transistors and integrated circuits (generally known as "chips") that combine multiple transistors on a single piece of material to form a complete electronic circuit. Our semiconductors are used to accomplish many different things, such as converting and amplifying signals, interfacing with other devices, managing and distributing power, processing data, canceling noise and improving signal resolution. Our portfolio includes products that are integral to almost all electronic equipment.

We sell custom and standard semiconductor products. Custom products are designed for a specific customer for a specific application, are sold only to that customer and are typically sold directly to the customer. The life cycles of custom products are generally determined by end-equipment upgrade cycles and can be as short as 12 to 24 months. Standard products are designed for use by many customers and/or many applications and are generally sold through both distribution and direct channels. They include both proprietary and commodity products. The life cycles of standard products are generally longer than for custom products.

Additional information regarding each segment's products follows.

Analog Analog semiconductors change real-world signals - such as sound, temperature, pressure or images - by conditioning them, amplifying them and often converting them to a stream of digital data that can be processed by other semiconductors, such as digital signal processors (DSPs). Analog semiconductors are also used to manage power distribution and consumption. Sales to our Analog segment's more than 80,000 customers generated 43 percent of our revenue in 2010. According to external sources, the worldwide market for analog semiconductors was about $42 billion in 2010. Our Analog segment's revenue in 2010 was about $6 billion, or about 14 percent of this fragmented market, the leading position. We believe that we are well positioned to increase our market share over time.

Our Analog product lines are: high-volume analog & logic, high-performance analog and power management.

High-volume analog & logic products: High-volume analog includes products for specific applications, including custom products. The life cycles of our high-volume analog products are generally shorter than those of our high-performance analog products. End markets for high-volume analog products include communications, automotive, computing and many consumer 16-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- electronics products. Logic and standard linear includes commodity products marketed to many different customers for many different applications.

High-performance analog products: These include standard analog semiconductors, such as amplifiers, data converters and interface semiconductors (our portfolio includes nearly 16,000 products), that we market to many different customers who use them in manufacturing a wide range of products sold in many end markets, including the industrial, communications, computing and consumer electronics markets. High-performance analog products generally have long life cycles, often more than 10 years.

Power management products: These include both standard and custom semiconductors that help customers manage power in any type of electronic system. We design and manufacture power management semiconductors for both portable devices (battery-powered devices, such as handheld consumer electronics, laptop computers and cordless power tools) and line-powered systems (products that require an external electrical source, such as computers, digital TVs, wireless base stations and high-voltage industrial equipment).

Embedded Processing Our Embedded Processing products include our DSPs and microcontrollers. DSPs perform mathematical computations almost instantaneously to process or improve digital data. Microcontrollers are designed to control a set of specific tasks for electronic equipment. Sales of Embedded Processing products generated 15 percent of our revenue in 2010. According to external sources, the worldwide market for embedded processors was about $18 billion in 2010. Our Embedded Processing segment's revenue in 2010 was about $2 billion, or about 11 percent of this fragmented market. We believe we are well positioned to increase our market share over time.

An important characteristic of our Embedded Processing products is that our customers often invest their own research and development (R&D) to write software that operates on our products. This investment tends to increase the length of our customer relationships because customers prefer to re-use software from one product generation to the next. We make and sell standard, or catalog, Embedded Processing products used in many different applications and custom Embedded Processing products used in specific applications, such as communications infrastructure equipment and automotive.

Wireless Growth in the wireless market is being driven by the demand for smartphones, tablet computers and other emerging portable devices. Many of today's smartphones and tablets use an applications processor to run the device's software operating system and to enable the expanding functionality that has made smartphones the fastest growing wireless segment. Smartphones and tablets also use other semiconductors to enable connectivity through means other than the cellular network (such as Bluetooth® devices, WiFi networks, GPS location services, and Near Field Communication (NFC)).

We design, make and sell products to satisfy each of these requirements. Wireless products are typically sold in high volumes, and our Wireless portfolio includes both standard products and custom products. Sales of Wireless products generated about $3 billion, or 21 percent of our revenue, in 2010, with a significant portion of those sales to a single customer.

Our Wireless investments are concentrated on our connectivity products and OMAP applications processors, areas we believe offer significant growth opportunities and which will enable us to take advantage of the increasing demand for more powerful and more functional mobile devices. We no longer invest in development of baseband products (products that allow a cell phone to connect to the cellular network), an area we believe offers far less promising growth prospects. Almost all of our baseband products are sold to a single customer. We expect substantially all of our baseband revenue, which was $1.7 billion in 2010, to cease by the end of 2012.

Other Our Other segment includes revenue from our smaller semiconductor product lines and from sales of our handheld graphing and scientific calculators. It also includes royalties received for our patented technology that we license to other electronics companies and revenue from transitional supply agreements entered into in connection with acquisitions and divestitures. The semiconductor products in our Other segment include DLP® products (primarily used in projectors to create high-definition images) and custom semiconductors known as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). This segment generated about $3 billion, or 21 percent of our revenue, in 2010.

17-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inventory Our inventory practices differ by product, but we generally maintain inventory levels that are consistent with our expectations of customer demand. Because of the longer product life cycles of standard products and their inherently lower risk of obsolescence, we generally carry more of those products than custom products. Additionally, we sometimes maintain standard-product inventory in unfinished wafer form, as well as higher finished goods inventory of low-volume products, allowing greater flexibility in periods of high demand. We also have consignment inventory programs in place for our largest customers and some distributors.

Manufacturing Semiconductor manufacturing begins with a sequence of photo-lithographic and chemical processing steps that fabricate a number of semiconductor devices on a thin silicon wafer. Each device on the wafer is tested and the wafer is cut into pieces called chips. Each chip is assembled into a package that then is usually retested. The entire process typically requires between 12 and 18 weeks and takes place in highly specialized facilities.

We own and operate semiconductor manufacturing facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. These include both high-volume wafer fabrication and assembly/test facilities. Our facilities require substantial investment to construct and are largely fixed-cost assets once in operation. Because we own much of our manufacturing capacity, a significant portion of our operating cost is fixed. In general, these fixed costs do not decline with reductions in customer demand or utilization of capacity, potentially hurting our profit margins. Conversely, as product demand rises and factory utilization increases, the fixed costs are spread over increased output, potentially benefiting our profit margins.

The cost and lifespan of the equipment and processes we use to manufacture semiconductors vary by product. Our Analog products and most of our Embedded Processing products can be manufactured using older, less expensive equipment than is needed for manufacturing advanced logic products, such as our Wireless products. Advanced logic wafer manufacturing continually requires new and expensive processes and equipment. In contrast, the processes and equipment required for manufacturing our Analog products and most of our Embedded Processing products do not have this requirement.

To supplement our internal wafer fabrication capacity and maximize our responsiveness to customer demand and return on capital, our wafer manufacturing strategy utilizes the capacity of outside suppliers, commonly known as foundries. We source about 25 percent of our wafers from external foundries, with the vast majority of this outsourcing being for advanced logic wafers. In 2010, external foundries provided 60 percent of the fabricated wafers for our advanced logic manufacturing needs. We expect the proportion of our advanced logic wafers provided by foundries will increase over time. We expect to maintain sufficient internal wafer fabrication capacity to meet the vast majority of our analog production needs.

In addition to using foundries to supplement our wafer fabrication capacity, we selectively use subcontractors to supplement our assembly/test capacity. We generally use subcontractors for assembly/test of products that would be less cost-efficient to complete in-house (e.g., relatively low-volume products that are unlikely to keep internal equipment fully utilized), or when demand temporarily exceeds our internal capacity. We believe we often have a cost advantage from maintaining internal assembly/test capacity.

Our internal/external manufacturing strategy reduces the level of our required capital expenditures, and thereby reduces our subsequent levels of depreciation below what it would be if we sourced all manufacturing internally. Consequently, we experience less fluctuation in our profit margins due to changing product demand, and lower cash requirements for expanding and updating our manufacturing capabilities.

Product cycle The global semiconductor market is characterized by constant, though generally incremental, advances in product designs and manufacturing processes. Semiconductor prices and manufacturing costs tend to decline over time as manufacturing processes and product life cycles mature. Typically, new chips are produced in limited quantities at first and then ramp to high-volume production over time. Consequently, new products tend not to have a significant revenue impact for one or more quarters after their introduction. In the results discussions below, changes in our shipments are caused by changing demand for our products unless otherwise noted.

Market cycle The "semiconductor cycle" is an important concept that refers to the ebb and flow of supply. The semiconductor market 18-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- historically has been characterized by periods of tight supply caused by strengthening demand and/or insufficient manufacturing capacity, followed by periods of surplus inventory caused by weakening demand and/or excess manufacturing capacity. This cycle is affected by the significant time and money required to build and maintain semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

Seasonality Our revenue and operating results are subject to some seasonal variation. Our semiconductor sales generally are seasonally weaker in the first quarter than in other quarters, particularly for products sold into cell phones and other consumer electronics devices, which have stronger sales later in the year as manufacturers prepare for the major holiday selling seasons. Calculator revenue is tied to the U.S. back-to-school season and is therefore at its highest in the second and third quarters. Royalty revenue is not always uniform or predictable, in part due to the performance of our licensees and in part due to the timing of new license agreements or the expiration and renewal of existing agreements.

Tax considerations We operate in a number of tax jurisdictions and are subject to several types of taxes including those that are based on income, capital, property and payroll, as well as sales and other transactional taxes. The timing of the final determination of our tax liabilities varies by jurisdiction and taxing authority. As a result, during any particular reporting period we might reflect in our financial statements one or more tax refunds or assessments, or changes to tax liabilities, involving one or more taxing authorities.

Second-Quarter 2011 results Our second-quarter revenue was $3.46 billion, net income was $672 million and earnings per share (EPS) were 56 cents.

We are pleased with the continued success of our portfolio in Analog and Embedded Processing. Sequential revenue growth was driven by Embedded Processing up 12 percent and Analog up 3 percent, resulting in market share gains in both segments. In the quarter, we also resumed production ahead of schedule at our Japan factories that were damaged in the March 2011 earthquake, thanks to excellent work by our teams on the ground.

We expect growth in the third quarter, but because of mixed macroeconomic and market signals we are prepared for a broader-than-normal range of growth possibilities. We note that production at some computing and consumer manufacturers appears lukewarm even though we are heading into the back-to-school and holiday seasons. At the same time, Asian distributor resales have been strong, demand from our Japanese customers is increasing and our backlog increased in the second quarter. We have planned for modest sequential growth in the third quarter, yet are prepared to support higher demand if it materializes.

19 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]