Skyworks Revenue Down for Q2

RF/microwave integrated device manufacturer, Skyworks Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: SWKS) announced their second fiscal quarter 2009 results on Thursday. Revenue for the quarter was $173.0 million, a 14 percent decrease from $201.7 million in the year-ago period and versus guidance of $168.0 million.

Non-GAAP operating income was $21.2 million in the second fiscal quarter with diluted earnings per share of $0.12, $0.02 better than consensus estimates. On a GAAP basis, operating loss for the second fiscal quarter was $3.7 million and diluted loss per share was $0.03, including $19.4 million of previously disclosed charges relating to the Company’s operating expense reduction initiatives.

“Despite the challenging economic backdrop, Skyworks delivered solid financial results in the second fiscal quarter of 2009 driven by our diversification, scale advantages, fab-lite strategy and improved cost structure,” said David J. Aldrich, president and chief executive officer of Skyworks. “Offsetting general market weakness, our performance was highlighted by strength in energy management and smart grid technologies, China 3G base stations, smart phones and push-to-talk applications. At a higher level, we believe our results demonstrate that Skyworks is gaining share in the broader analog semiconductor market and is creating a highly differentiated business model.”

Business Highlights

* Maintained non-GAAP gross margin of 40 percent (38 percent on a GAAP basis)
* Reduced operating expenses by more than $25 million on an annualized basis
* Partnered with Itron, a leading energy technology provider, to meet increasing demand for smart meter technology
* Captured key design wins at Huawei and ZTE for 3G and 4G base station solutions
* Unveiled a suite of low noise amplifiers targeting ultra-high performance infrastructure, GPS and satellite radio applications
* Supported an increasingly popular e-book reading platform developed by one of the world’s largest online retailers
* Expanded Qualcomm baseband partnership leveraging higher value front-end modules and encompassing a growing number of 2G, 3G and HSDPA reference designs
* Named Supplier of the Year for the second consecutive time by LG Electronics

Third Fiscal Quarter 2009 Outlook

“Although we remain cautious on the macro-economy, Skyworks intends to resume top and bottom line growth in the current quarter through share gains and participation in new markets,” said Donald W. Palette, vice president and chief financial officer of Skyworks. “Specifically, we expect June quarterly revenue to be up 5 percent sequentially with expanding margins driving non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.14 - - - a 15 percent sequential improvement in profitability.”

TriQuint Reports Q1 2009 earnings

As expected, Q1 2009 revenue was seasonally down, compared to Q4, in a challenging economic environment of inventory correction and reduced short term demand. Still, total revenue was up 7% as compared to Q1 2008. These results were led by Handset growth of 24% and Defense / Aerospace growth of 23%. The reduction of both channel and TriQuint inventory drove Oregon fab’s utilization to 35% and pushed gross margin down, resulting in a Non-GAAP net loss of ($0.07) per share on revenue of $118.9 million, both on the favorable end of our expectations. Fortunately, an inflection point of increasing demand occurred late in the quarter as Handset inventory normalized.

Highlights from the quarter included:

* Revenue for the first quarter was $118.9 million, up 7% from Q1’08
* Inventory was reduced $19.8 million from the fourth quarter of 2008
* Book to bill ratio for the quarter was 1.14
* Honored by Intel Corporation with its 2008 Preferred Quality Supplier award
* Achieved cumulative shipments of more than a half billion total RF modules
* Introduced the market’s first SMT device for 40Gb/s optical communications
* Unveiled TRIUMF™, 3G/4G converged mobile solution
* First design win for TriPower™ – Next generation infrastructure RF power solution
* Fulfilled initial production orders of GaAs and BAW devices for multi-nation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

Commenting on the results for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, Ralph Quinsey, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated “The global economic downturn prompted lower inventory at our customers and very low factory utilization in Q1. We are now seeing signs of inventory normalization in some of our markets which should translate into stronger demand in the coming months."

Quinsey also commented that, "Market strength in smart-phones, the acquisition of WJ Communications and positive momentum in major military programs contributed to our year over year growth.”

AWR Reports Good Results

On Monday (April 20th) high-frequency EDA supplier AWR® announced record annual revenues for its 2009 fiscal year that ended March 31, as well as for the year’s fourth quarter, and record backlog as it enters the 2010 fiscal year. This achievement marks the twelfth consecutive year of revenue growth for the company and was broad-based, with strong bookings throughout Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region from both new and existing customers. It is an impressive streak for the software innovator - especially in light of the worldwide recession.

AWR executives attribute the performance to several factors. The company acknowledged that it had received two of its largest orders in company history, both from top-tier manufacturers of third-generation (3G) wireless transceiver modules for smart phones. The company also claimed to have experienced strong growth within existing aerospace and defense accounts as well as from new customers that switched to AWR products from competing tools.

I’ve always believed that tough times calls for digging in and doubling your efforts to do what has made one successful in the past. This effort needs to also be balanced with flexibility in order to change to changing times. Based on this latest fiscal report, AWR seems to being doing both of these quite well. How is your company weathering the storm? Is the performance of your company better than expected? Are we turning a corner in this recession? Tell us about your success.

Oracle to Acquire Sun Microsystems

Back in the mid-80s, do you remember sign-up sheets for workstations, which were extremely expensive and in short supply. Design software such as MDS (HP), Libra (EEsof) and Harmonica (Compact Software) required the high performance computing only available on these machines and EM simulation software such as HFSS was not yet widely available. Many of us (junior) engineers had to work later in the evening waiting for a workstation to became available. Do you remember the Unix wars between the proponents of BSD from Univerity of California, Berkeley and System V from AT&T? BSD Unix vendor Sun Microsytems and AT&T would start working together on a unified system in 1987. Eventually a workstation for every design engineer would become a reality. Workstations and PCs have certainly come a long way since then, and today's simulators often utilize compute farms to address ever-larger problems, broad parameteric sweeps and optimization, yet hearing that Oracle Corp. plans to acquire Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4billion, brought back memories of those days many years ago.

In the deal, Oracle trumped IBM by picking up what might prove to be a software treasure trove that includes the popular MySQL open-source database as well as Java.
Oracle said it will pay $9.50 per share in cash for Sun, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. The move follows Oracle's purchases of a raft of companies in the past few years, including Siebel Systems, PeopleSoft and BEA Systems.

Sun shares rose by $2.41 to $9.10 in trading about an hour after the market opened, while Oracle shares declined by $1.03 to $18.03. Shares of the buying company in big mergers and acquisitions often sink at first as investors debate the relative merits of laying out large amounts of cash for the acquisition.

On a conference call Monday, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Java and Solaris were the two main reasons Oracle purchased Sun, a move that is in line with Oracle's acquisition strategy to buy companies with "market-leading products."

Calling Java "the single most important software asset we have ever acquired," he said Oracle's Java-based middleware business, bolstered first by the BEA acquisition and now by the purchase of Sun, is on track to become as large as Oracle's flagship database business. Oracle's Fusion middleware is based on Java.

Oracle also considers Solaris "by far the best Unix technology available in the market," which is why more Oracle databases run on that OS than any other, Ellison said. He said Oracle's enterprise customers running both products will be able to experience new benefits by technical integration of the products.

Anyone else care to share some old Sun Solaris SPARC memories?