Altera Announces Fourth Quarter Results

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 24, 2012 -- Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced fourth quarter sales of $457.8 million, down 12 percent from the third quarter of 2011 and down 18 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010. Fourth quarter net income was $146.6 million, $0.45 per diluted share, compared with net income of $185.4 million, $0.57 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2011 and $231.6 million, $0.72 per diluted share, in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Cash flow from operating activities in 2011 was $959.6 million. Altera ended the quarter with $3.5 billion in cash and investments.

Altera's board of directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share payable on March 1, 2012 to stockholders of record on February 10, 2012.

"While industry conditions led to sequential sales declines in the fourth quarter, Altera grew 6 percent in 2011—well ahead of most of the semiconductor industry. Our FPGA market share once again improved," said John Daane, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board. "As we have seen over the last several years, there are long-term technology-based trends that favor FPGAs. We continue to believe that these factors, plus ongoing FPGA share gains, give us the potential over time for sales growth twice that of the semiconductor industry."

Several recent accomplishments mark the company's continuing progress:

• Altera has begun shipping its first mid-range 28-nm Arria® V FPGAs. Arria V devices are the lowest power mid-range FPGAs available in the market today. Offering transceiver speeds up to 10.3125-Gbps, the Arria V family was developed on TSMC's 28-nm Low-Power (28LP) process. With 50 percent lower static power and 50 percent lower transceiver power than any FPGA in its class, the Arria V FPGA delivers the lowest total power of any mid-range FPGA family. Available in four family variants, designers can choose the device that meets their exact needs, including devices that embed a dual-core ARM® Cortex™ -A9 MPCore™ processor. The Arria V family's innovative features allow designers to tailor their low-power, high-bandwidth, and low-cost requirements for next-generation shipments in wireless, broadcast, and military markets.

• Altera has announced the industry's first OpenCL™ program for FPGAs. The OpenCL standard is a C-based open standard for parallel programming. Altera's OpenCL program combines the parallel processing performance capability of FPGAs with the OpenCL standard to enable powerful system acceleration. This combination also offers a significant time-to-market advantage compared with traditional FPGA development. Altera has expanded its university program to support the OpenCL standard for FPGA development in academia, and is actively contributing to the evolution of the Open CL standard based on customer feedback. Early results of customer evaluations show a 35X performance increase compared with multi-core CPU solutions and a 50 percent reduction in development time compared with traditional HDL-developed FPGA solutions. OpenCL FPGA-targeted applications range from high-performance computing to advanced radar systems, medical imaging, and video encoding and processing—any system that requires fast computations that can be parallelized.

• Altera has received further industry recognition for its 28-nm FPGA portfolio. Electronics Weekly selected Altera's 28-nm portfolio as the Semiconductor Product of the Year – Digital at its annual Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards. The Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards are the most prestigious product technology and business awards in Europe. The awards recognize the achievements of individuals and companies in the electronics industry. A panel of independent industry experts and a representative from Electronics Weekly selected Altera's 28-nm FPGA portfolio as the winner of the Semiconductor Product of the Year – Digital from a pool of six nominees based on Altera's 28-nm portfolio's performance, design flexibility and suitability for applications. EDN Magazine also selected Altera's 28-nm SoC FPGA family as one of its 100 Hot Products of 2011. The 2011 EDN Hot 100 highlights the electronics industry's most significant products of the year based on innovation, significance, usefulness, and popularity as determined by the magazine's editors and readers.

A conference call will be held today at 1:45 p.m. Pacific Time to discuss the quarter's results and management's current business outlook. The web cast and subsequent replay will be available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.altera.com. A telephonic replay of the call may be accessed later in the day by calling (719) 457-0820 and referencing confirmation code 258712. The telephonic replay will be available for two weeks following the live call.

First Quarter Update

Altera's first quarter business update will be issued in a press release available after the market close on March 8, 2012.

About Altera

Altera programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more about Altera's FPGA, CPLD and ASIC devices at www.altera.com.