Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN ) just brought some swagger to this rodeo.
In last night's second-quarter report, TI showed us good numbers and an optimistic outlook. Revenue came in at $2.46 billion -- 27% below the year-ago period but up 18% quarter over quarter. $0.20 of earnings per share represented a 55% annual drop but was a clear improvement over the measly penny per share seen last quarter. Importantly, operating cash flow ticked up 7% over last year, showing that TI still has muscle where it really counts.
And it all adds up to daybreak in Texas. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC ) sees healthy consumer spending fueling a winsome summer, and TI follows up with another cheery consumer market assessment. Sales landed in the upper end of revised and boosted guidance, fueled mainly by "high-volume equipment manufactured in Asia, notebook PCs, hard disk drives, smartphones, and consumer products such as TVs and video game systems."
"We understand that uncertainty continues in the in-demand environment and we will keep our operations flexible to respond to changing customer needs," said CEO Rich Templeton. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) might buy a slew of media processing chips here and there, but TI's largest customer, Nokia (NYSE: NOK ) , is not having the time of its anthropomorphic life right now.
TI needs to stay on its toes in order to adapt to these rapidly changing market conditions, so the asset-light manufacturing strategy makes a lot of sense today. No wonder that the likes of Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD ) have followed in TI's outsourcing footsteps.
For the tech market meteorologists out there, we have a slew of important bellwether reports coming up in the next few days, including Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) on Thursday, Apple tonight, and Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO ) in two weeks. As for reading TI's tea leaves, I think we just got another strong vote for a consumer-driven market recovery. The other tech heavyweights should concur.
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