CEOs Speak: Texas Instruments, Xilinx and Molex

Interesting quotes from CEOs and CFOs on recent earnings conference calls, discussing their companies and markets:

Texas Instruments VP IR Ron Slaymaker:

Wireless revenue declined 10% sequentially and was down 2% from a year ago. Our Wireless revenue reflected what you have heard from others in this market, in that handset unit growth is skewed toward lower price, basic feature handsets.

...In the fast-growing market for low-priced handsets, TI's position is very strong. Our single-chip product, named LoCosto, has taken this market by storm. The fourth quarter was our first full quarter of LoCosto production. We shipped more than 6 million LoCosto units in the quarter, and our customers have 12 handset models that are shipping based on the product today. This was the sharpest volume ramp of any new product we have introduced in our wireless history.

We expect the volume ramp to continue through 2007 based on more than 50 handset models already underway across 15 different handset manufacturers. The device that is shipping today is based on 90-nanometer CMOS. We plan to begin sampling a 65-nanometer LoCosto device in the second quarter, a technology lead that is one to two process generations ahead of any competitor for a comparably integrated product.

See the full Texas Instruments conference call transcript.

Xilinx CEO Wim Roelandts:

Let me now turn to the guidance for the quarter. The March quarter has almost always been very strongest revenue growth quarter. It is also rare for us to have more than two quarter of sequential revenue decline back-to-back. However, we enter our fourth fiscal quarter with the weakest beginning backlog position and the knowledge that our defense business will decline over 10% sequentially.

We also remain somewhat cautious regarding communications, and in particular the wireless sector. As a result, we are forecasting March sales to be flat-to-down 5% sequentially. The midpoint of this guidance is based on the terms that are flat with the December quarter. While this may seem conservative given the typical seasonal strength of the March quarter and the fact that there are more selling days in March, versus December, we believe it is the prudent quarter action. We expect all geographies to be flat-to-down sequentially.

From an end-market perspective, we expect communications to be down, sequentially driven by wireless applications; industrial and other to be down, driven by decline in defense sales; data processing to be flat-to-down sequentially; and consumer and automotive to be up, driven by strength in audio, video and broadcast area.

See the full Xilinx conference call transcript.

Molex CEO Martin Slark:

We had good growth in consumer, driven by digital consumer electronics and the games market where we have strong plan with all of the three major manufacturers there. Automotive was surprisingly strong but reflects continued increase in electronic content in vehicles and increased penetration of Asian suppliers which we think will be an increase in the important factor moving forward.

Growth rates in the Telecom and data markets were weaker this quarter. Weaker growth in Telecom was due to the cell phone sector. In the data market, weaker areas were primarily in the mainframe and desktop sectors. Desktop data storage and the notebook sectors remained strong.

...I would like to emphasize that we are not seeing abnormal rates of order cancellations or delays in customers' new projects. Rather, we believe that the industry demand is in the process of returning to more normal growth rates. And this moderation process is being augmented by above normal seasonal inventory adjustments within the supply chain.

See the full Molex conference call transcript.