Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc. (South Portland, ME) stated that its fourth quarter 2000 sales were in the range of $468.0 to $470.0 million. Trade revenues were up 36 percent from fourth quarter 1999, and up slightly from third quarter 2000, while foundry revenues (revenues from manufacturing service agreements with other semiconductor vendors) dropped sequentially.
"We were encouraged that we were able to continue our strong year-over-year revenue growth, and also grow our trade revenues sequentially from third quarter, a result we believe outpaced many of our competitors," said Kirk Pond, chairman, president and CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor. "As we stated in our mid-quarter update, we took advantage of our multi-market business model with its diverse customer base, shifting our product mix to capitalize on immediate opportunities in December. While we didn't achieve our goal of 3-percent-quarterly sequential growth in total revenue, we did offset many of the backlog adjustments and cancellations that continued through the latter half of the fourth quarter."
"We know our multi-market business model is working and we believe we are well-positioned to remain solidly profitable through this period of slower industry growth," stated Joe Martin, executive vice president and CFO. "Roughly one-third of our sales are from new products, which have helped improve our gross margins during the last several quarters. And while we expect some margin erosion during this correction, we believe sales of our higher margin new products will help offset expected lower prices in our mature product sales over the next few quarters."
