Electronics news digest

1 October 2008 News Electronic News Digest Electronic News Digest

South Africa

Altron has been awarded a gold certificate for corporate governance by Corporate Governance Accreditation (CGA) – having achieved a score in excess of 80%. The CGA award is a national independent measure of corporate governance that recognises companies with positive governance practices while providing assurance to stakeholders and investors.

The Smart Card Society of South Africa has changed its contact details as a result of poor support and unexpected discontinuation of certain services from its communications provider. The two new contact telephone numbers are 087 940 2501 (from within SA) and +27 (0)11 462 1690 (from outside SA).”

Overseas

Business

National Semiconductor reported sales of $466 million and net income of $80 million, or 33 cents per share, for the first quarter of fiscal 2009. In its fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, the company reported $462 million in sales, $83 million in net income and 34 cents per share. Gross margin of 66,0% in the latest quarter set a new record for the company and was up from the 65,9% gross margin achieved in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, and considerably higher than the gross margin of 63,0% reported in the first quarter of fiscal 2008.

Wind River reported results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2009, ended 31 July. Revenues for the second quarter of fiscal 2009 were $91,9 million, compared with $84,6 million reported in the second quarter of fiscal 2008, an increase of 9%. GAAP net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2009 was $8,8 million, compared to a net income of $4,3 million in the second quarter a year ago, an increase of 104%. Net income per diluted share for the quarter was $0,11, compared to a net income per diluted share of $0,05 in the second quarter a year ago, an increase of 120%.

NXP Semiconductors has announced a reorganisation programme involving its manufacturing base, central R&D and support functions. This programme is expected to affect approximately 4500 people globally and will result in annual savings of $550 million. The restructuring cost will result in an estimated cash out of $800 million. Reflecting the company’s asset-light strategy, the company will migrate to more advanced production processes and reduce excess capacity in older technologies.

Micron posted a net loss of $236 million for its third quarter of fiscal 2008, or $0,30 per diluted share, on net sales of $1,5 billion. These results compare to GAAP results for the second quarter of a net loss of $777 million, or $1,01 per diluted share. Net sales increased 10% compared to the second quarter, primarily from higher sales of both DRAM and NAND Flash memory products.

LeCroy reported fourth quarter fiscal 2008 revenue of $40,7 million with a GAAP gross margin of 53,1%. GAAP operating margin for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 was -0,7%. The company reported GAAP operating loss of $271 000 and GAAP net loss of $810 000, or $0,07 per share. The operating loss includes $4,2 million in non-cash charges, which consist of $2,4 million related to the write-down of inventory, $981 000 in share-based compensation, $699 000 for the impairment of an intangible asset, and $57 000 in incremental cost of sales for the fair-value adjustment to acquired inventory. Excluding those items, the company reported a 9,6% non-GAAP operating margin, $3,9 million of non-GAAP operating income and $2,9 million of non-GAAP net income, or $0,24 per diluted share.

Lattice Semiconductor has announced financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2008. Revenue was $58,1 million, an increase of 3% from the $56,6 million reported in the prior quarter, and a decrease of 2% from the $59,2 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. FPGA revenue for the second quarter was $13,4 million, down 2% from the $13,7 million reported in the prior quarter, and down 1% from the $13,5 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. PLD revenue for the quarter was $44,7 million, an increase of 4% over the $42,9 million reported in the prior quarter, and a 2% decrease from the $45,7 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. New product revenue for the second quarter was $12,3 million, up 10% from the $11,2 million reported in the prior quarter, and up 90% from the $6,5 million reported in the same quarter a year ago.

Ixys reported record net revenues of $79,3 million for the first fiscal quarter of 2009, an increase of 4,5% when compared with net revenues of $75,9 million for the same period in the prior fiscal year. Gross profit was $24,8 million, or 31,2% of net revenues, as compared to gross profit of $22,4 million, or 29,5% of net revenues, for the same quarter in the prior fiscal year. Notably, gross profit percentage improved in sequential quarters – marking three consecutive quarters of increases. Net income for the quarter was $5,5 million, or $0,17 per diluted share, as compared to a net income of $7,0 million, or $0,21 per diluted share for the same quarter in the prior fiscal year.

Companies

International Rectifier (IR) announced that its board of directors has unanimously determined that a recent unsolicited proposal by Vishay Intertechnology to acquire all of the outstanding shares of IR for $21,22 per share in cash was not in the best interests of IR and its shareholders. Vishay subsequently increased the price of its all-cash proposal to $23,00 per share. The increased proposal represents a premium of 22% to IR’s closing stock price on 14 August, the last trading day prior to public disclosure of Vishay’s original acquisition proposal, and a 30% premium over IR’s average closing price for the 30 trading days preceding that announcement. The transaction has an aggregate value of approximately $1,7 billion.

E2v Technologies has announced that its subsidiary, e2v Holdings, has conditionally agreed to buy QP Semiconductor for an initial cash consideration of $65 million. In addition, deferred consideration of up to $15 million may be payable to QP shareholders, subject to future operating profit performance targets being achieved by QP. E2v may satisfy up to $5 million of the deferred consideration through the issue of new ordinary shares to the QP shareholders. All other deferred consideration is to be issued in cash. The overall cash consideration will be funded through existing bank facilities.

Vishay has acquired a specialty capacitor (wet tantalum) product line from Kemet for $35,2 million and other consideration in the form of a three-year term loan of $15 million. Sales of these products during Kemet’s fiscal year ended 31 March 2008 were approximately $16,0 million, of which approximately $7 million represent former Arcotronics products (acquired last year by Kemet) sold mostly outside of the US and approximately $9 million of original Kemet products sold mostly in the US. Worldwide sales during the quarter ended 30 June 2008 were $4,4 million.

Virage Logic announced that Analog Devices has licensed the company’s AEON embedded non-volatile memories (NVM) for use in a broad range of analog and mixed-signal products. The product line, acquired by Virage as part of its recent purchase of the NVM IP business of Impinj, is part of the company’s portfolio of embedded NVM solutions. The AEON memory system supports 100 000 write-erase cycles over the life of the memory and provides bit counts from 8 bits to 8 Kbits.

Industry

It has been announced that AMD will support the Universal Graphics Module standard (UGM). As a leading vendor of well known ATI computer graphics processing technologies, AMD’s support for the UGM standard is expected to accelerate its rapid and wide-spread acceptance. The UGM standard provides off-the-shelf embedded graphics on an industry-standard modular platform with multiple display configurations to guarantee customers short time to market.

Leading providers of audio codecs Fraunhofer IIS and speech codecs VoiceAge have announced that their proposal for a new MPEG audio codec has been selected by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) to provide the basis for ongoing standardisation work. Following a rigorous testing procedure that involved approximately 80 listeners in 11 test laboratories grading a total of 65 000 subjective responses, the new technology was declared to be the winner during an MPEG session in July, thereby becoming the basis for future standardisation work. When completed, the new codec (with working title 'MPEG Unified Speech and Audio Codec') will provide high quality at bit rates between 12 and 64 Kbps for both music and speech.

According to industry researcher DisplaySearch, the worldwide market for TV ICs was 29,8 million units in the second quarter of 2008, 21% higher than in the same quarter last year. Shipments were up 7,8% compared to the first quarter of 2008, as TV set makers built in line with seasonality and rapid flat panel TV sales growth in the US and Eastern Europe. Mediatek was #1 with 19,8% share, as design demand grew from Taiwanese ODMs, in particular with the launch of price-fighting models for North America for Samsung and Sony. Trident was #2 with 11% share, down from over 15%. Zoran and MStar continue strong growth as design-wins at ODMs in Taiwan increase production, while STMicroelectronics occupied fourth spot.

According to a market research from BCC Research, the global market for quantum dot (QD) technology is expected to be worth $28,6 million in 2008, increasing to over $721,1 million in 2013, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 90,7%. Quantum dots for applications in optoelectronics and solar energy are expected to launch in 2010. Estimated revenues for the optoelectronics segment in 2011 are $90,0 million. This should increase to $245,7 million in 2013, a CAGR of 65,2%. The solar energy segment should see revenues of $74,1 million in 2011 and increase to $96,3 million in 2013, for a CAGR of 14,0%.

Technology

Scientists at the US Department of Defence’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set what they claim is a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40,8% of the light that hits it into electricity. The new cell differs significantly from the previous record holder – also based on an NREL design. Instead of using a germanium wafer as the bottom junction of the device, the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts. These are absorbed by each of the cell’s three junctions for higher potential efficiencies. The new cell, which is extremely thin and light, is a natural candidate for use on space satellites and in solar concentrators on Earth.

International Rectifier has announced the successful development of a gallium nitride (GaN)-based power device technology platform that it claims can provide customers with improvements in key application-specific figures of merit (FOM) of up to a factor of 10 compared to state-of-the-art silicon-based technology platforms, to dramatically increase performance and cut energy consumption in end applications in a variety of market segments such as computing and communications, automotive and appliances. The technology platform is the result of five years of research and development by IR, based on the company’s proprietary GaN-on-silicon epitaxial technology.

NXP Semiconductors has developed its latest SmartMX security chip, the P5CD081, a high performance contactless IC for ePassport and electronic identification applications. The IC processes transactions extremely fast and offers the highest security level with an EAL5+ level common criteria certification. The chip is also the first smartcard controller to feature Secure Fetch technology, which offers increased protection against attack scenarios with light and lasers (so-called fault attacks), thereby facilitating the development of highly secure software applications.

At the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2008 expo, a company called Elektrobit demonstrated Web browsing and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling on what is said to be the industry’s first ever dual-mode satellite-terrestrial HSPA smartphone reference design. This reference design automatically switches between cellular and satellite networks, allowing laptops, automobiles and mobile users to maintain Internet connectivity regardless of location.





