Shares of Irvine’s Microsemi Corp., a maker of chips for military, aerospace and industrial uses, continued their bullish run on Friday after an analyst upgraded the stock.

Investors sent the stock up more than 9% in early afternoon New York trading on a recent market value of $1.3 billion.

A Needham & Co. analyst upgraded Microsemi to a “buy” from a hold rating.

The buoyant shares come a day after Microsemi gave an outlook for the current quarter that came in just ahead of Wall Street’s expectations.

For the December quarter, Microsemi said it’s expecting to report profits of $20 million to $21 million on sales of about $111 million to $114 million.

Analysts, on average, are looking for profits of $20 million on sales of $112 million.

The outlook comes on the heels of Microsemi’s results for the September quarter, which beat on sales and were in line with expectations.

For the three months through September, Microsemi reported sales of $110 million, down 19% from the same period a year earlier and beating analysts’ expectation of $109 million in revenues.

Excluding charges for stock compensation, severance pay and other items, the company posted profits of $19 million, down 34% from the year-ago quarter and in line with what analyst’s expected.

Other analysts weighed in after Microsemi’s post-earnings conference call.

“Microsemi delivered another growth quarter ahead of estimates,” said analyst Tore Svanberg at Thomas Weisel Partners LLC in a research note. “We are pleased by Microsemi’s performance and by its improving fundamentals. We believe the company could experience solid top and bottom-line growth acceleration in 2010.”

Microsemi makes chips known as high-reliability that are used in devices where failures can be costly.