Jan 27 - Texas Instruments on Tuesday issued first-quarter revenue guidance that sits above Wall Street expectations, a sign the U.S. firm sees improving demand for its analog chips following a prolonged market slump.
The company gave a revenue range of $4.32 billion to $4.68 billion for the first quarter, compared with a consensus estimate of $4.42 billion compiled by LSEG. The guidance helped push Texas Instruments shares up by nearly 5% in extended trading.
Investors have already shown renewed appetite for the stock: after a drop of more than 7% in 2025, the shares have climbed over 13% so far this year. That movement reflects hopes that a years-long oversupply in analog chips is easing after elevated customer inventories accumulated during periods of excessive buying in the pandemic.
Texas Instruments is closely watched as one of the first major U.S. chipmakers to report earnings for the September quarter, and its results are often treated as a gauge of demand across multiple industries because of the broad adoption of its analog products.
For the fourth quarter, the company reported revenue of $4.42 billion, which missed an estimate of $4.44 billion.
Policy developments have complicated the outlook for the semiconductor sector. Earlier in January, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on certain artificial intelligence chips. Those duties, however, do not apply to chips and derivative devices imported for U.S. data centers, startups, non-data center consumer applications and non-data center civil industrial applications.
Despite the carve-outs, analysts at Stifel cautioned ahead of the results that confusion over how tariffs apply to analog chips - together with broader geopolitical uncertainty - remains a material hurdle for the company.
Context and market implications
- TI’s guidance exceeding estimates points to an improving demand cadence for analog components.
- Stock gains reflect investor optimism that customer inventory normalization is underway following pandemic-era overbuying.
- Policy ambiguity around tariffs and geopolitical risks continue to cloud the outlook for analog chipmakers and related industrial and technology markets.