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Investing.com - Analog chipmaker Texas Instruments (NASDAQ:TXN) reported Thursday soft earnings guidance for the current quarter which overshadowed fourth-quarter results that topped analysts' expectations on both the top and bottom lines.
Shares in the company fell more than 4% in premarket US trading on Friday.
For the three months ended December 31, Texas Instruments announced earnings per share of $1.30 on revenue of $4.01 billion. Analysts polled by Investing.com had anticipated per-share income of $1.21 on sales of $3.9 billion.
Speaking to analysts in a post-earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Haviv Ilan flagged that its automotive chip business was dented by "significant weakness", with growth in China "less pronounced" than in the third quarter.
Its industrial division, which uses chips for tasks like factory automation, also "modest" sequential declines, Ilan noted. The unit, along with the automotive services, are the two biggest revenue drivers for the Dallas-based group.
"Industrial remains soft" while the Chinese automotive segment returns were "not enough to offset weakness elsewhere," analysts at Bernstein said in a note to clients.
Looking ahead, first-quarter earnings per share were forecast to be between $0.94 and $1.16 and revenue was seen in a range of $3.74 billion to $4.06 billion, compared with analyst estimates for $1.17 per share and $3.85 billion, respectively.
Ilan said the firm expects a "seasonal decline" in the market for personal electronics in the first quarter after a "pretty decent" final three-months of the prior fiscal year for this segment.
A maker of semiconductors that help power electronic devices, Texas Instruments' results are often viewed as a bellwether for demand across the chipmaking sector.
(Yasin Ebrahim and Reuters contributed reporting.)
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