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For first-quarter 2008, TriQuint Semiconductor Inc of Hillsboro, OR, USA has reported revenues of $111.1m, up slightly on $110.6m a year ago but down 14% on last quarter’s $128.5m.

Of total revenue, handsets accounted for 50%, networks 38% and military 12% (compared to 53%, 36% and 11% last quarter respectively, indicating a further shift from handsets to networks).

Of handset revenues, CDMA accounted for 39%, GSM 34%, WCDMA/EDGE 21%, and WLAN/other 6% (compared to 30%, 47%, 21% and 2% last quarter respectively, indicating a shift away from GSM and a rise in WLAN applications).

Of network revenues, base-station products accounted for 33%, broadband (WLAN) 24%, standard products 20%, broadband (optical) 12%, broadband (cable) 6% and groundstation (including satellite) 5% (compared to 42%, 13%, 23%, 8%, 5% and 9% a year ago, respectively, showing growth in WLAN).

“While revenue was seasonally down, we achieved better-than-expected earnings on strong gross margin performance,” says president and CEO Ralph Quinsey. Gross margin of 34.6% is down from 36.7% last quarter, but up from 31.1% a year ago. Net income was just $4.5m, down from $6.4m a year ago and $13.8m last quarter. Nevertheless, during the quarter, cash and cash equivalents grew by $15.9m to $219.4m.

The drop in profits has been driven by operating expenses rising 21% from $29.5m a year ago to $35.8m, and R&D spending rising almost 40% from last year's $14.3m to $19.9m as TriQuint has been developing products for the military and networking markets (since TriQuint has gained market share in cell phones through integrating parts into a module, it is now extending that strategy into other markets).

During the quarter, TriQuint launched the TQP13N (a high-performance/low-cost GaAs process for millimeter-wave applications) and ramped IEEE 802.11n wireless LAN (WLAN) module platform production to high volume. It will also ramp 3G Tritium modules to high-volume production in Q2/2008.

“I expect healthy revenue growth in the second quarter as we continue ramping our new WLAN and 3G products to high-volume production,” says Quinsey. “We are implementing targeted capacity expansions in Oregon [the firm’s 6” GaAs wafer fab] and Costa Rica [the assembly plant] to support anticipated customer demand for our new products,” he adds.

For second-quarter 2008, TriQuint says it is currently 88% booked and expects revenue of $130-135m (rebounding by 17-22% from Q1, and up from $113.8m last year ) and earnings of $0.05-0.07 per diluted share ($0.07-0.09, excluding estimated equity compensation expense of about $2.4m), excluding partial-quarter results and any one-time charges from the $72m acquisition of WJ Communications Inc of San Jose, CA, USA (announced in mid-March), which designs and supplies GaAs-based RF products for wireless infrastructure, RFID and WiMAX markets.

“Preliminary integration efforts for WJ Communications are underway, as I expect this transaction to close in the second quarter,” Quinsey concludes.

See related items:

TriQuint faces dip in Q1 after record 2007

TriQuint makes gains, despite cost of Peak Devices acquisition

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