Atmel reaffirms 4Q guidance

In an effort to stop the bleeding among chip stocks, Atmel Corp. (Nasdaq ATML) said Friday that it would meet its fourth-quarter financial numbers provided during its most recent quarterly earnings conference call.

Shares of the chip maker rose over 8 percent, up 0.81 to 10.47 in pre-session trading on the Island ECN network. Yesterday, the stock dropped nearly 12 percent.

The announcement comes a day after the semiconductor sector was hit hard on a warning from Altera (Nasdaq: ATML) and a slew of analyst downgrades.

According to Atmel, the company remains on course to meet guidance it provided during its most recent quarterly earnings conference call, but did not disclose actual figures.

The First Call Corp.'s earnings estimate for the company's fourth quarter is for a profit of 18 cents per share. Atmel earned 8 cents per share in previous year's fourth quarter.

"We see very strong demand for Atmel devices used by a wide variety of products such as digital cameras, fingerprint sensors, wireless LANs for networking products, and secure smart cards for e-commerce and PC security applications," said George Perlegos, Atmel's president and CEO, in a statement.

Last month, the company topped estimates for the third quarter by a penny, posting a profit of earning $76.5 million, or 16 cents a share, on sales of $530.4 million.

Reuters contributed to this report.