Texas Instruments Shouldn't Be This Cheap

The only surprise you'll get from Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) is that there are no surprises.

This week marks the third time in a row that Texas Instruments raised its quarterly guidance figures in the mid-quarter update. The new range of second-quarter revenue expectations goes to $3.59 billion from $3.45 billion, while earnings are now expected to reach at least $0.60 per share. In both cases, the new target is the upper half of the original goal.

Following early signals from Silicon Laboratories (Nasdaq: SLAB), Texas Instruments pointed to strong orders in the industrial sector as a driver of its strong business. Moreover, the chip slinger is expanding its internal manufacturing capacity while chief competitors Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM) and QUALCOMM (Nasdaq: QCOM) all depend on the same group of outsourcing plants. This gives Texas Instruments  the upper hand when Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) and United Microelectronics (NYSE: UMC) can't keep up with demand, as the case has been for three quarters now.

Texas Instruments is reshaping its business to get out of the commoditized, low-margin market for mobile phone radio chips. The new focus is on high-end mobile processors, where the current OMAP3 series mainly competes against the QUALCOMM SnapDragon and scores of other designs based on architectures from ARM Holdings (Nasdaq: ARMH). The upcoming OMAP4 chips should find their way into plenty of smartphones and tablets, thusly keeping the momentum alive.

Several analysts believe that Texas Instruments is severely undervalued at today's prices, and the minuscule forward P/E ratio of just 9.7 would support that opinion. I just rated the stock "outperform" in Motley Fool CAPS, as I believe that Texas Instruments  will beat the market to a bloody pulp over the next couple of years. Feel free to follow in my All-Star-branded footsteps to boost your own CAPS score or let me know why you think I might be wrong.