Power and Automotive Products Lead STMicro’s Q2 Financial Performance

For the period ending June 29, 2013, STMicroelectronics NV reported second quarter net revenues totaled $2.05 billion and gross margin was 32.8%. Net loss attributable to ST was $152 million. Sense & Power and Automotive Products (SPA) second quarter net revenues increased 7.3% sequentially, mainly driven by Industrial and Power products and Automotive. SPA revenues increased 4.6% compared to the year-ago quarter driven by MEMS. SPA operating margin was 3.5% in the 2013 second quarter compared to 5.1% and 8.3% in the prior and year-ago quarter, respectively, with the decrease principally driven by resources deployed from ST-Ericsson to strengthen R&D activities and price pressure within the Analog, MEMS and Sensors (AMS) group.

Embedded Processing Solutions (EPS) second quarter net revenues decreased 5.0% and 16.0% on a sequential and year-over-year basis, respectively, due to a significant decrease in ST-Ericsson sales and to a lesser extent, Digital Convergence (DCG). EPS segment operating margin improved to negative 12.8% in the 2013 second quarter, from negative 24.2% and negative 23.7% in the prior and year-ago quarter, respectively, mainly due to a significant reduction in expenses.

“In the second quarter we saw sequential progress towards our objectives of sales growth, gross margin improvement and expense reduction,” said ST President and CEO Carlo Bozotti.

“Sales were in line with our guidance, despite an accelerated decline of ST-Ericsson’s existing product revenues. Gross margin came in above the midpoint of our guidance due to manufacturing efficiencies and increased volumes. Our quarterly operating expense run rate continues to decrease substantially both on a sequential and year-over-year basis.

“Our strong sequential increase in sales of 6.8%, excluding Wireless product line, came from growth in several key product areas including Microcontrollers, Industrial and Power, Automotive and Imaging. These results are due to both the introduction of new products and the changes we made last year to expand our geographic and customer coverage, with new major accounts and distributors, with the latter further increasing as a percentage of sales.

“We again made solid progress towards our quarterly net operating expenses target range as we exited the second quarter with operating expenses excluding restructuring charges of $736 million, or $72 million and $151 million lower than the prior and year-ago quarters.”