Altera Announces Third Quarter Results

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced third quarter sales of $522.5 million, down 5 percent from the second quarter of 2011 and down 1 percent from the third quarter of 2010. Third quarter net income was $185.4 million, $0.57 per diluted share, compared with net income of $214.6 million, $0.65 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2011 and $217.5 million, $0.69 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2010.

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Year-to-date cash flow from operating activities was $739.2 million. Altera repurchased 4.8 million shares of its common stock during the quarter at a cost of $197 million. Altera ended the quarter with $3.3 billion in cash and investments.

Altera's board of directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share payable on December 1, 2011 to stockholders of record on November 10, 2011.

"Customer reaction to changing global macroeconomic conditions reduced industry demand. Despite this near-term deceleration we saw further growth from our 40-nm products and are very pleased with the successful launch of our 28-nm FPGAs. With our development software publicly available since mid-2010, we are already shipping to initial production-based demand for 28-nm Stratix V FPGAs," said John Daane, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board. "There are more 28-nm products to be rolled out, including Altera's SoC FPGAs, which integrate a multi-core ARM A9 processor into our Cyclone V and Arria V FPGA fabric."

Several recent accomplishments mark the company's continuing progress:

• Altera is now shipping Stratix® V GT FPGAs, the industry's first 28-nm devices with 28-Gbps transceiver capability. This device follows the successful launch of the Stratix V GX family in early April. Building on more than a decade of internally developed transceiver technology innovations, Stratix V FPGAs enable designers of leading-edge communications and military systems to quickly bring to market solutions that support the ever-growing demand for network bandwidth. Stratix V FPGAs are the only FPGAs to use TSMC's 28HP (high performance) process. Altera combines the benefits of the 28HP process with a tailored optimized architecture, equipping the Stratix V GT FPGA with high performance and the industry's highest bandwidth, while dramatically reducing the system's power-per-bandwidth profile.
• Altera has announced its families of ARM-based SoC FPGAs, integrating 28-nm Cyclone® V and Arria® V FPGA fabrics, a dual-core ARM® Cortex-A9 MPCore™ processor, peripherals, and high-bandwidth interconnect into a single chip. The Cyclone V and Arria V SoC FPGAs are based on the low-power 28LP process and like all of Altera's 28-nm FPGAs use a tailored architecture to optimize performance, power and cost. Altera's SoC FPGAs appeal to designers in a variety of industries looking for ways to have flexibility and reduce board size, power and cost, while boosting performance. Also announced was the immediate availability of the industry's first virtual target for software development on SoC FPGAs. Based on proven virtual prototyping solutions, Altera's SoC FPGA Virtual Target is a PC-based functional simulation of an Altera SoC development board. With Altera's SoC FPGA Virtual Target, engineers can jump-start their software development to maximize their productivity and get to market quicker.
• Altera was named by Forbes magazine as one of the world's top 100 most innovative companies. The rankings, which appear on Forbes.com and in the August 8 issue of Forbes magazine, are based on an eight-year study by Harvard Business School professor and "master of disruptive innovation" Clayton M. Christensen, along with colleagues Jeff Dyer, a professor at Brigham Young University, and Hal B. Gregersen, a professor of leadership at the Institut Europeen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD). Altera was recognized for its culture of innovation that drives the company's success. Altera's founders pioneered the first reprogrammable logic device in 1983, giving birth to an entirely new market segment in semiconductors.
• Altera has been selected by China Electronic News (CEN) to receive its 2011 Best FPGA Technology Award. The selection committee was comprised of government officials, industry experts, members from the CEN editorial team, and channel distributors who reviewed nominations from CEN editors and the public. In making the award, CEN noted the success of Altera's 40-nm FPGAs and the many innovations enabled by its 28-nm product portfolio, such as variable-precision DSP, 28-Gbps transceivers, partial reconfiguration, and Embedded HardCopy® Blocks.

Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call

A conference call will be held today at 1:45 p.m. Pacific Time to discuss the quarter's results and management's current business outlook. The web cast and subsequent replay will be available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.altera.com. A telephonic replay of the call may be accessed later in the day by calling (719) 457-0820 and referencing confirmation code 258712. The telephonic replay will be available for two weeks following the live call.

Fourth Quarter Update

Altera's fourth quarter business update will be issued in a press release available after the market close on December 8, 2011.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this press release that are not historical are "forward-looking statements" as the term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are generally written in the future tense and/or preceded by words such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," or other words that imply or predict a future state. Forward-looking statements include any projection of revenue, gross margin, expense or other financial items discussed in the Business Outlook section in this press release. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this release involve risks and uncertainty that can cause actual results to differ from those currently anticipated, due to a number of factors, including without limitation, current global economic conditions, customer business environment, customer inventory levels, vertical market mix, market acceptance of the company's products, product introduction schedules, the rate of growth of the company's new products including Cyclone® IV, Arria® II, Stratix® IV,  and Stratix V FPGAs, MAX® V CPLDs and HardCopy®  IV device families, changes in the mix of our business between prototyping and production-based demand, as well as changes in economic conditions and other risk factors discussed in documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from time to time. Copies of Altera's SEC filings are posted on the company's website and are available from the company without charge. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this release, and, except as required by law, the company does not undertake an obligation to update its forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

About Altera

Altera programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more about Altera's FPGA, CPLD and ASIC devices at www.altera.com. Follow Altera via Facebook, RSS and Twitter.

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS and STRATIX words and logos are trademarks of Altera Corporation and registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective holders as described at www.altera.com/legal.

Product Category Description

• New Products include the Stratix® V, Stratix IV (including E, GX and GT), Arria® II (including GX and GZ), Cyclone® IV (including E and GX), MAX® V, and HardCopy® IV devices.
• Mainstream Products include the Stratix III, Cyclone III, MAX II, and HardCopy III devices.
• Mature and Other Products include the Stratix II (and GX), Stratix (and GX), Arria GX, Cyclone II, Cyclone, Classic™, MAX 3000A, MAX 7000, MAX 7000A, MAX 7000B, MAX 7000S, MAX 9000, HardCopy II, HardCopy, FLEX® series, APEX™ series, Mercury™, and Excalibur™ devices, configuration and other devices, intellectual property cores, and software and other tools.

SOURCE Altera Corporation