NI continues to have a very strong balance sheet, with $194 million in net cash and short-term investments as of March 31, 2006. The company also announced a dividend of 6 cents per share on its common stock payable on May 30, 2006.
Geographically, the growth of revenue in U.S. dollar terms for Q1 2006 compared to Q1 2005 was as follows: up 22 percent in the Americas, up 16 percent in Europe and up 17 percent in Asia, equaling overall growth of 19 percent. In local currency terms, revenue was up 26 percent in Europe and up 22 percent in Asia, for an overall local currency growth of 23 percent.
Looking at Q1 revenue in more detail, sales of NI instrument control products were up 2 percent year-over-year. Sales of the rest of the NI product portfolio, in other words the NI virtual instrumentation platforms, were up 15 percent year-over-year. NI growth in Q1 was driven by the success of new products, especially in the areas of data acquisition, distributed I/O, modular instruments and PXI.
For Q2 2006, NI currently expects revenue to be in the range of $ 155 million to $ 162 million. The company currently expects GAAP fully diluted EPS to be in the range of 15 cents to 20 cents per share, and expects non-GAAP fully diluted EPS to be in the range of 20 cents to 25 cents per share. In Q2 2006, the company expects the impact of stock-based compensation to be 4 cents per share and the impact of the amortization of acquisition-related intangibles to be 1 cent per share.
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