Cypress revenues are down by 26% in Q4 of 08, but PSoC register record revenue

Cypress Semiconductor has announced that 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.

For the fiscal year 2008, Cypress posted total revenue of $766.3 million, a decrease of 7% from fiscal year 2007 revenue of $821.6 million. On a GAAP basis, Cypress's fiscal year 2008 diluted net loss per share was $2.93, compared with diluted earnings per share of $2.30 in 2007. On a non-GAAP1 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 CEO 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."

Few key 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.