DALLAS (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. chip company Texas Instruments is cautious about the second quarter after a weak start to the year. In terms of revenue in the three months to the end of June, the company expects sales of between $4.17 billion and $4.53 billion. This would mean that the Infineon competitor would only generate more revenue than in the first quarter if it reached the upper band of the forecast range. In the middle of the range, it would mean a 16.5 percent year-over-year decline, which would be slightly more than analysts expected. With the outlook, the Group is signaling continued subdued demand - at least in the short term.

In the first three months of the year, revenue fell six percent to just under $4.4 billion (around four billion euros) compared with the last quarter of 2022. Compared to the previous year, the decline was eleven percent. Business with chips for the automotive industry, for example, developed robustly. The remaining end markets developed weaker, said CEO Haviv Ilan. In a weaker economic environment, chipmakers' customers currently prefer to reduce their inventories first rather than place new orders.

Profit fell 22 percent from the year-ago quarter to just over $1.7 billion. Per share, this was 1.85 (prior-year quarter: 2.35) dollars. Here, the Group expects a figure of between 1.62 dollars and 1.88 dollars in the second quarter. Both the result and the forecast missed the expectations of the experts.

The share initially fell sharply after trading hours, but was able to quickly reduce the losses and return to the profit zone. The share price rose by up to 2.3 percent. Optimism prevailed that the technology industry was ready for a turnaround. In the long term, he was very optimistic about the industry, end markets and Texas Instruments, Chief Financial Officer Rafael Lizardi said in an interview. The company avoided saying when the chip industry downturn would bottom out. No one really knows, the executive said. Investors and analysts are betting that a recovery will begin by the end of the year.

Texas Instruments has one of the broadest customer bases in the semiconductor industry. This makes the company an indicator of the chip market's development./nas/zb/mne/stk