National Semiconductor Corp says that once again its sales and earnings per share will come in under expectations, this time over the next two quarters. Losses per share, excluding one time charges, came in at 42 cents on sales of $510m in the fourth quarter. But NatSemi says it now expects sales for the first quarter to decline between 8% and 10% from the fourth quarter, resulting in greater losses. And it doesn’t expect the situation to improve in its second quarter, ending November 29. While new order rates showed some improvement over the fourth quarter, shipments were hit by the weakness in overall semiconductor demand, including the PC market, NatSemi said. The led to lower capacity utilization of wafer fabrication facilities, plus increased manufacturing transition costs. The news coincided with similar warnings from LSI Logic Corp (see separate story) and Analog Devices Inc. Analog, which reported third quarter sales down 7% to $294.9m from the previous year, and income down 81% to $8.8m said it would be cutting 5% of its workforce and shutting down production at its plants over the next quarter, due to lower than expected demand. Analog said it still expected its digital signal processor business to continue growing at over 30% over the year.
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