New plant adds flexibility

Article Excerpt

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC. $187 is a buy. The stock (Nasdaq symbol TXN; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 923.0 million; Market cap: $172.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 10.3; Dividend yield: 2.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.ti.com) gives you a stake in this top maker of analog chips. Its products convert inputs like touch, sound and pressure into electronic signals that computers can understand. The company is now buying a chip manufacturing plant in Lehi, Utah, from Micron Technology Inc. (Nasdaq symbol MU). The purchase will give it more flexibility to respond to changes in chip demand. Texas Instruments will pay $900.0 million for this facility when it completes the purchase by the end of 2021. To put that price in context, it earned $1.93 billion, or $2.05 a share, in the second quarter of 2021. It will take about a year to re-tool the plant to make analog chips, so the new facility will begin generating revenue in 2023. Texas Instruments…