Shares of Newport Beach-based chipmaker Mindspeed Technologies Inc., continued their bullish run on Tuesday, a day after the company gave a better than expected outlook for the current quarter.
Investors sent shares up nearly 8% on a recent market value of $200 million.
For the current quarter, Mindspeed said it’s expecting sales of $38.9 million to $40.3 million, up around 35% from the March quarter of 2009 and beating analysts’ expectations of $37 million in revenue.
It didn’t give a profit outlook. Analysts, on average, are expecting profits of $1.4 million.
The improved sales outlook was on the heels of Mindspeed’s quarterly results for the three months through Jan. 1, which it announced after the close of trading yesterday.
Mindspeed reported sales of $37 million, up 34% from the same period a year earlier and in line with analysts’ expectations.
Excluding charges for stock compensation, severance pay, write-downs on assets and other costs, the company saw profits of $2 million, up from a loss of $6 million in the year-ago quarter.
Mindspeed’s seen a big boost in sales from large contracts with networking gear makers in Asia for its chips that convert phone calls to digital signals so they can be sent over fiber-optic lines.
Sales to China make up about half of Mindspeed’s revenue.
Its biggest customers are large Chinese networking companies, including China Unicom Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co., as well as Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.
Mindspeed makes chips for networking and spun off from Newport Beach chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc. in 2003.
The maker of chips for routers, switches, gateways and other gear is expected to move its headquarters to Aliso Viejo later this year.
Mindspeed’s shares are up about 40% in the past month or so.
