Texas Instruments Inc’s fourth quarter net profit of $1.98 a share was slightly above some analysts’ expectations, and was buoyed by the booming chip business. Chief financial officer William Aylesworth told Reuters he expects the semiconductor industry to continue to experience strong double-digit growth, adding that the market appears to have grown 30% last year, up from 29% in 1993. Aylesworth also said suspension of work at the company’s KTI Semiconductor plant near Kobe, Japan, in the aftermath of the earthquake is not expected to have a material effect on Texas Instruments or its customers: operations have now resumed at the plant, a joint venture with Kobe Steel Ltd. The company remains committed to the notebook computers most people forget it even makes, and Aylesworth said it is adding resources to marketing and product development and will be focusing on selling to corporate customers. Corporations have a lot of demand (for notebooks), and we had not necessarily focused on that area in the past, he said. Aylesworth said the memory part of the semiconductor market grew substantially faster than 30% in 1994 with demand in the memory market outpacing supply.Orders in the components segment, which includes semiconductors, were up 27% for the year and revenues ahead by 33% compared with 1993. The company plans to increase capital spending in 1995 by 20% to $1,300m and company-funded research and development rose $99m in 1994 to $689m, and will rise to about $800m this year. Research and development in 1995 will support targeted opp ortunities in advanced memory and microprocessors, signal processing and digital imaging technology for display and hard copy applications. The defence electronics segment fourth quarter orders were down 30% from a year ago because of reduced procurement levels on mature production programmes and turnover was down 17% from the 1993 period. Margins were essentially flat with the fourth quarter of 1993. The digital products segment reported essentially flat orders for the fourth quarter but sales in the division were up 12%, and the segment ran at a profit.
