Apr. 16--San Jose chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor today said it lost $90.7 million during the first quarter of this year, considerably worse than it did for the same period a year ago. But the company echoed Intel's assessment earlier this week that the worst of the recession is over.

"We believe that Q1 was the bottom of the trough," Cypress CEO T. J. Rodgers said in a prepared statement. "Customers are beginning to place backlog orders and to restock depleted inventory levels."

Other chipmakers also have reported an uptick in orders from their customers, including giant Intel of Santa Clara, which declared Tuesday that sales of personal computers containing its chips "bottomed out during the first quarter and that the industry is returning to normal seasonal patterns."

Cypress's loss was wider than the $23.6 million in red ink that it reported in the first quarter of 2008. In addition, the company's first quarter revenue this year was $139.3 million, down 17.3 percent from the $168.4 million it took in for the same period a year ago, excluding revenue from SunPower, the solar-panel firm it spun off last year.

However, Cypress said its revenue this quarter exceeded what it had predicted it would be. Shares of the company's stock rose 12 cents to $7.45 in early trading.

Contact Steve Johnson at sjohnson@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5043

-----

To see more of the San Jose Mercury News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mercurynews.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:CY, NASDAQ-NMS:INTC, Singapore:5GD,

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.