The company has reported revenue for the 2008 fourth quarter was $165.6 million, down 26% from $222.7 million for the prior quarter, and down 20% from $206.9 million for the year-ago period.
As a result of the spin-off of SunPower Corp. in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, Cypress no longer consolidates SunPower’s results, and reports SunPower as discontinued operations for all periods presented in this release.
Cypress recorded a GAAP net loss of $424.4 million in the 2008 fourth quarter, or a diluted net loss per share of $2.94. This includes non-cash charges of $357.0 million for goodwill impairment and $31.1 million for stock-based compensation expenses. This compares with last quarter’s diluted net loss per share of $0.16. GAAP diluted earnings per share in the year-ago fourth quarter was $0.01.
Non-GAAP net loss for the 2008 fourth quarter–earnings that exclude discontinued operations of SunPower, stock-based compensation, acquisition-related charges, impairment losses, restructuring charges and other special charges and credits–totaled $10.9 million, or a diluted net loss per share of $0.08. That compares with non-GAAP1 diluted earnings per share of $0.15 for the prior quarter and $0.15 for the year-ago fourth quarter.
On a non-GAAP basis, Cypress’s fiscal year 2008 diluted earnings per share was $0.21, compared with diluted earnings per share of $0.49 in 2007.
Cypress president and chief executive officer T.J. Rodgers commented, The fourth quarter of 2008 was as difficult as advertised; nonetheless, we achieved record annual revenues for our flagship PSoC product line as well as our West Bridge peripheral controller. We continued to gain significant design wins for our proprietary products–especially PSoC design wins in touchscreen applications.”
Our semiconductor book-to-bill ratio ended Q4 at 0.70, the lowest level since the dotcom crash, but not as bad–at least so far. Customer ordering patterns have yet to stabilize so visibility remains extremely limited, but we continue to see strong customer acceptance of our products in the marketplace. We remain proactive on managing our cost structure and have a solid balance sheet.
Business Review:
Non-GAAP consolidated gross margin for the fourth quarter was 42.8%, down 7.7% points from the previous quarter due mainly to reduced factory utilization as we proactively reduced wafer starts to manage inventory levels to a significantly lowered end-customer demand. Overall corporate average selling price remained flat. Net inventory balances decreased by 5% sequentially.
On a GAAP basis, fourth-quarter consolidated gross margin was 38.9%, down 5.4% points from the previous quarter due mainly to reduced factory utilization.
Cypress repurchased 24.5 million shares of common stock in the fourth quarter.
Fourth-Quarter 2008 Highlights:
Cypress’s programmable solutions business continued to grow in the fourth quarter. Its PSoC customer base-customers who have generated PSoC revenue for Cypress in the last 12 months-increased to 8,826 customers, up 6.9% quarter-on-quarter and 41.9% year-on-year. Programmable and proprietary products accounted for 77% of Cypress’s core semiconductor business in the fourth quarter.
IMS Research named Cypress the market share leader in touch sensors. Cypress has replaced an estimated 2.5 billion buttons in handsets, cars, computers, white goods and consumer electronics.
Cypress was granted its 750th programmable solutions patent. Overall, Cypress holds more than 1,650 patents and has more than 1,100 patent applications pending.
Cypress introduced the CyFi low-power radio frequency (RF) solution, a reliable, flexible, power-efficient 2.4-GHz wireless control and communications solution with superior range, targeting building automation, remote controls, health and fitness equipment and industrial monitoring. Cypress also expanded its PSoC FirstTouch starter kit for the CyFi low-power RF solution. The kit allows quick prototyping and debugging of wireless systems.
Two Cypress products were named among the industry’s best in 2008: Cypress’s CyFi low-power RF solution was named to EDN magazine’s Hot 100 products list, while its CapSense Express touch-sensing solution received the Readers’ Choice Award from ECN magazine.
Enabled by Cypress’s West Bridge Antioch peripheral controller-which provides a direct, High-Speed USB 2.0 connection between peripheral devices-the Blackberry Bold delivered the fastest PC-to-phone multimedia file transfers in a recent EE Times 3G mobile handset test. The Blackberry Bold can download a feature-length movie in about two minutes while continuing to operate as a handset. This download rate is three to 18 times faster than competing multimedia phones.
Cypress and Legend Silicon introduced a first-of-its-kind USB TV dongle reference design bringing high-resolution TV reception to PCs and laptops. The solution targets more than half of the TV viewers in China.
Cypress’s intelligent lighting solutions now support Dragon LEDs from Osram Opto Semiconductors and Power LEDs from Nichia Corp, two of the top five LED producers worldwide. The device specifications and temperature characteristics for both product families are built into Cypress’s visual embedded software, enabling users to design complex lighting systems with no coding.
Cypress subsidiary Cypress Envirosystems has partnered with Honeywell to develop a wireless gauge reader. The solution, to be marketed worldwide by Honeywell, automates meter reading to improve the efficiency of industrial plants.
The U.S. Department of Justice closed its grand jury investigation into possible antitrust violations in the static random access memory (SRAM) industry.
