European chip company Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany), which has been focused on automotive, industrial, power and security applications, recorded improving sales and profits in its third financial quarter ending June 30.
The company reported a net profit of €143 million (about $190 million) on revenues of €1,110 million (about $1.49 billion) The profit was up sequentially from €124 million and year-on-year from €77 million. The revenue increased 6 percent sequentially and 9 percent year-on-year.
In comments to analysts on a conference call CEO Reinhard Ploss stressed that all four business divisions improved sales and contributed to the overall position. The divisions are: automotive, industrial power control, power management and multimarket, and chipcards and security.
"Our forecast has proved to be correct: revenue, earnings and margin all improved again in the third quarter, with all four segments making a positive contribution", stated Ploss, in a statement. The company also recorded its fifth consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth.
Infineon's net cash position at the end of the quarter also improved to €2,073 million (about $2.77 billion) up from €2,010 million.
Ploss was asked why it was retaining such a significant cash pile. He answered that there continued to be some uncertainty over a final settlement over the closure of Infineon's Qimonda memory operation which is in the hands of an insolvency manager.
Nonetheless Infineon was looking for merger and acquisition targets. "If we should not find any attractive M&A targets we will look at other ways of returning cash. "Should we not find any attractive M&A we will consider other capital repayment options," Ploss said.
"We are in a phase of robust growth," said Ploss. The outlook for Infineon in the fourth fiscal quarter is for sequential growth of between 3 percent and 7 percent. This has the impact of raising Infineon's expectations for the full fiscal year. Infineon now expects to be slightly above the previous given year on year expansion of 7 to 11 percent growth.
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