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NEW YORK — Shares of TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. rose ahead of Thursday's market open after the chip maker posted strong fourth-quarter results and an analyst raised his earnings estimates.
The Hillsboro, Ore., company's stock added 17 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $6.92 in premarket trading.
Late Wednesday, TriQuint said it earned $17.5 million, or 11 cents per share, during the final three months of 2009. In the same period of 2008, it lost $34.3 million, or 23 cents per share.
Excluding costs for employee stock compensation and several other items, TriQuint beat the average earnings estimate among analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters by a penny per share.
Merriman Curhan Ford analyst Scott Searle said a higher gross margin was the main reason for the earnings surprise. That, together with the company's projection for 20 percent revenue growth this year, led him to raise his earnings estimate for 2010 to 53 cents per share from 47 cents per share. He raised his 2011 earnings-per-share estimate to 76 cents from 68 cents. He kept a "Buy" rating.
TriQuint is a major supplier of chips for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Searle noted, and the growth of the "smart" phone market in general gives it "solid growth prospects."
The company said it expects earnings per share to range from 8 cents to 10 cents in the first quarter, excluding employee stock compensation costs and other items. Analysts had forecast earnings of 7 cents per share for the first three months of the year.
