ARM Holdings share price up on FTSE 100 as Q2 profit jumps 167%

Shares in ARM Holdings were up on the FTSE 100 before the close today after the technology company said its second quarter profits had soared by 167 per cent.

In the period ended 30 June revenue in pounds at the group increased 54 per cent to £100 million, while dollar revenue jumped 42 per cent to $150.3 million.

Overall profit before tax increased 167 per cent to £43.5 million. The group also said that it would be raising its interim dividend by 20 per cent to 1.16 pence per share.

The group said that it had seen a rise in demand for mobile applications thanks to the growth of the smartphone market, in addition to expansion across its other business divisions.

In an outlook statement ARM said, "We enter the second half of the year with record order backlog, a robust opportunity pipeline and strong momentum as ARM continues to increase penetration across its target markets. Although the impact of the broader macroeconomic environment on end consumer demand later in the year remains uncertain, we expect group dollar revenues (excluding catch-up PD royalty revenues of $9 million reported in Q2) for the full-year 2010 to be in line with current market expectations."

Warren East, Chief Executive Officer of ARM, said, "We are pleased to report strong underlying revenue and profit performance in the first half, in improved trading conditions compared with one year ago. Our strategy remains on track for growth in mobile, non-mobile and new technology outsourcing. Major semiconductor vendors and consumer electronics companies are making long-term commitments to using ARM technology in their future products. Freescale, Microsoft and TSMC all recently announced adoption of ARM's latest technology which will further increase ARM's market penetration, and royalty potential, in a broadening range of end applications. ARM continued to gain share in the quarter with shipments of ARM-based chips growing faster than the industry in all target markets."

By 16:45 shares in ARM Holdings were up 0.75 per cent on the FTSE 100 to 336.40 pence per share.