Shares of Texas Instruments (TXN) closed down 7.48% today after the company reported that third-quarter earning felt $1.49 a share from $1.58 a share in the third quarter of 2018. Revenue dropped 11% year over year.
On the other hand, shares of Apple continued to move higher today, closing up 1.34%. Traders and investors are expecting the company to raise sales forecasts for the new iPhone 11 when it (Apple, that is, and not the iPhone 11) reports earnings on October 31.
The two trends fought to a standstill in the technology sector today with the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) up 0.09% on the day. The wider NASDAQ Composite closed ahead 0.19%.
The market reaction was to push shares closely connected to Apple, such as Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) up at least slightly. Skyworks shares finished higher by 0.37%.
Stocks of companies that seemed like they might share some markets with Texas Instruments, on the other hand, moved lower. Â Infineon (IFNNY), which like Texas Instruments sells into the auto chip market, closed down 0.38%.
And shares of some volatility momentum favorites sold off, well, just because. Shares of Nvidia (NVDA), which does sell to auto makers as Texas Instruments does but, I would argue sells a very different kind of chip, plunged by 2.36% at the opening before recovering to end the day down 0.29%.
Texas Instruments sells almost 100,000 products to 100,000 customers so I’d be careful about drawing conclusions about market trends in specific technology sectors from this news. The biggest part of Texas Instruments revenue does come from industrial and automotive markets. The company did say that one reason of the drop in third quarter sales was that customers had accumulated inventory in 2018 when growth rates were higher and before the U.S.-China trade war took a bite out of demand.
For the fourth quarter the company projected earnings of 91 cents to $1.09 a share on revenue of $3.07 billion to $3.33 billion. That would be well below Wall Street projections for earnings of $1.28 a share and sales of $3.59 billion. At the midpoint of sales projections, this guidance would be 14% below revenue for the fourth quarter of 2018.
