Investing in stocks: Texas Instruments reports higher revenue and earnings

Texas Instruments Inc. (symbol TXN on New York) makes chips for a wide variety of electronic devices, including cell phones, DVD players, digital cameras and handheld calculators. The company’s chips are also used in other products ranging from weapons-guidance systems to kidney-dialysis machines. We analyze Texas Instruments in Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our newsletter for investing in stocks in the U.S. market. In the three months ended March 31, 2011, earnings rose 1.2% to $666 million or $0.55 a share. A year earlier the company earned $658 million or $0.52 a share. The Japanese earthquake cut production at two of its factories. Earnings per share were reduced by about $0.02 because of costs associated with the earthquake. One factory is expected to resume full production shortly, and the other in July. Revenue was up 5.8%, to $3.4 billion from $3.2 billion a year earlier. Texas Instruments spent $422 million (or 12.4% of sales) on research in the latest quarter. That’s up 14.1% from $370 million (or 11.5% of sales) a year earlier. In early April, the company announced it will acquire National Semiconductor for $6.5 billion. The two companies are leaders in the manufacture of analog chips. (Analog chips convert sound and images into digital signals that computers can understand.) If you’re interested in investing in stocks in the U.S. market, you should subscribe to Wall Street Stock Forecaster. You can get the latest issue absolutely FREE when you subscribe now. Click here to learn how.

Jim is an associate editor at TSI Network. He is the lead reporter and analyst for The Successful Investor and Wall Street Stock Forecaster and a member of the Investment Planning Committee. Jim has held the Chartered Financial Analyst designation since 1992 and spent more than a decade at the Financial Post DataGroup before joining TSI Network. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto.