Mom's the word.(Texas Instruments voted best company for working moms)(Statistical Data Included)

Inside the DBJ Index

Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN)

Recent price: $27.30

52-week range: $20.10 to $54.68

Market cap: $47.4 billion

Book value: $7.30

News: For the sixth consecutive year, Dallas-based Texas Instruments was named by Working Mother magazine as one of the 10 best employers in the United States for working mothers. It is the only Texas company to be featured in the top 10.

About the company: Texas Instruments is a leading producer of semiconductors and other electronic products and has operations in more than 25 countries.

Upside: TI's last quarterly earnings report was not as bad as expected, and there are indications that orders were strong during August and September. The stock price over the past three months has fallen 13% -- less than the 22.6% drop for the industry as a whole. The debt-to-equity ratio is lower than the industry average at 0.09. TI remains popular with institutional investors.

Downside: The net profit margin of 12.8% is below the industry's 14.9%. Sales growth over the last year slowed more than for the industry as a whole and was weaker compared with the company's earnings growth over the past three years. The price-to-earnings ratio of 37.3 is well above the industry average of 28.4.

Bottom line: There is little doubt high-tech companies like TI will see little improvement in trading conditions for some time to come.

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Weekly Indexes 
 
 
                       CLOSE     CLOSE     NET 
                      10/10/01  10/03/01  CHANGE 
 
DBJ Index             1054.12   1002.77   5.12% 
Dow Jones Ind'l Avg.  9242.59   9123.78 …