Jul. 20--Texas Instruments Inc. reported second-quarter financial results Monday that were a bit higher than analysts had expected and issued an optimistic outlook for the rest of the year.

The Dallas-based chipmaker is the latest big tech company to offer a brighter forecast for the second half of 2009, following Intel and IBM, most notably.

President and chief executive office Rich Templeton said in a statement that TI is starting to burn through excess inventory built up after customers got skittish.

"Despite low visibility at the start of the quarter, our factories were able to respond to a surge in demand resulting in 18 percent sequential growth in revenue," he said.

"At the same time, TI inventory again declined, and by working with our distributors we were able to further reduce channel inventory by about 10 percent.

"Looking ahead, we expect solid sequential growth in the third quarter. As end demand trends remain uncertain, we will keep our operations flexible so we can quickly respond to our customers' needs."

Texas Instruments said sales in the second quarter totaled $2.46 billion, leading to a profit of $260 million, or 20 cents per share.

While both revenue and profit were lower than in the same period a year ago, they did come in higher than the $2.41 billion in sales and 18 cents per share in profit that analysts had been expecting.

In the third quarter, TI expects revenue to be in the range of $2.5 billion to $2.8 billion, with a profit in the range of 29 cents per share to 39 cents per share.

Shares of Texas Instruments gained 60 cents to close at $23.61 before the quarterly results were released.

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