Is an Industrial Recession Ruining Texas Instruments' Long Term Plans?

Many think of Texas Instruments (NASDAQ: TXN) as the ultimate bellwether for the semiconductor industry as well as the and broader technology sector. As such, many tech and chip peers sold off hard last week, after TI posted weak third-quarter results and gave even worse fourth-quarter guidance. In fact, the fourth-quarter guidance was as much as $300 to $500 million off analysts' revenue estimates, and a whopping 16%-29% below consensus estimates for earnings per share.

In fact, the guidance was so bad, and so far below already-muted expectations, that analysts pounced on management, looking for answers. That led Chief Financial Officer Rafael Lizardi to say:

I can sense that you collectively are unsatisfied with our answers, and I understand that. We have close to 100,000 different customers, and we sell about 100,000 different products. It is difficult to pinpoint any one thing, but the sense we get talking to those customers getting input from them, from our salespeople and all the touch points that we have, is that the weakness is broad-based, is due to macro events, and specifically the trade tensions.

Source Fool.com