GAAP net income for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 was $311.1 million, or $1.20 per diluted share, up from GAAP net income of $49.2 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, in the prior year's third fiscal quarter.  For the third quarters of fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019, GAAP net income was significantly adversely impacted by purchase accounting adjustments associated with our acquisitions.  In the third quarter of fiscal 2020, GAAP net income was significantly positively impacted by the tax benefit related to the intra-group transfer of certain intellectual property rights.

Non-GAAP net income for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 was $340.8 million, or $1.32 per diluted share, down from non-GAAP net income of $381.8 million, or $1.56 per diluted share, in the prior year's third fiscal quarter.  For the third quarters of fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019, our non-GAAP results exclude the effect of share-based compensation, expenses related to our acquisition activities (including intangible asset amortization, inventory valuation costs, severance and other restructuring costs, and legal and other general and administrative expenses associated with acquisitions including legal fees and expenses for litigation and investigations related to our Microsemi acquisition), IT security remediation costs, non-cash interest expense on our convertible debentures, losses on the settlement of debt, and gains and losses related to available-for-sale investments.  For the third quarters of fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019, our non-GAAP income tax expense is presented based on projected cash taxes for the fiscal year, excluding transition tax payments under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  A reconciliation of our non-GAAP and GAAP results is included in this press release.

Prior to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, we reported non-GAAP net sales based on end-market demand, which excluded the effect of our distributors increasing or decreasing their inventory holdings.  Beginning with the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, we changed the information included in our financial guidance and provide net sales guidance based on sell-in revenue recognition under the new GAAP standard.

Microchip announced today that its Board of Directors has declared a record quarterly cash dividend on its common stock of 36.70 cents per share.  The quarterly dividend is payable on March 6, 2020 to stockholders of record on February 21, 2020.

"We experienced strong bookings activity throughout the December 2019 quarter and upwardly revised our quarterly financial guidance twice after our original guidance on November 5, 2019," said Steve Sanghi, Chief Executive Officer.  "Our December 2019 quarterly net sales were near the high end of our most recent guidance from January 6, 2020 at $1.287 billion, which was down 3.76% sequentially.  Our non-GAAP gross margins were 61.5% and our non-GAAP operating margin were 35.1%, both of which were above the high-end of our most recent guidance range.  We delivered $1.32 of non-GAAP diluted earnings per share, which was also above the high-end of our most recent guidance."

Mr. Sanghi added, "End-market demand, which reflects sell-through activities in the distribution channel, was $36.1 million higher than GAAP (sell-in) revenue in the December 2019 quarter, the seventh consecutive quarter that end-market demand has exceeded sell-in revenue.  As a result, distribution inventory days declined during the quarter and are at very low levels."

"The end-market demand for our microcontroller business was down 1.1%, for our analog business was down 3.6% and for our FPGA business was flat compared to the September 2019 quarter.  Microcontrollers represented 53.6%, analog represented 28.1% and FPGA represented 6.9% of our end-market demand in the December quarter.  We continue to introduce a steady stream of new and innovative microcontroller, analog and FPGA solutions that we believe position us well for future growth," said Ganesh Moorthy, President and Chief Operating Officer.

Mr. Moorthy added, "While our bookings and backlog trends have not changed since our business update press release on January 6, the Coronavirus situation is rapidly evolving and most Chinese provinces have extended the Chinese New Year holidays in response to the spread of the virus. We have taken preventive measures to help ensure the safety of our employees and have completed a first pass assessment of our supply chain and currently believe our risk is low. However, it is too early to determine the impact to our customers as many of them are still not back from their holidays. We continue to actively monitor the progression of the Coronavirus events and plan to take additional actions as needed."

Eric Bjornholt, Microchip's Chief Financial Officer, said, "We paid down $257.0 million of total debt during the December quarter, reflecting a cumulative pay down of almost $2 billion over the past six quarters, as we have actively managed the working capital requirements for the business.  We will continue to use substantially all of our excess cash generation after dividends to reduce the amount of debt on our balance sheet as quickly as possible."

Mr. Sanghi concluded, "Our March quarter backlog is significantly higher than the December quarter backlog was at the same point in the quarter.  We are experiencing an increased level of customer requested expedited shipments and we are calling the December 2019 quarter as the bottom of the cycle for Microchip barring any negative developments on the US/China trade front, or the impact of Coronavirus .  Based on our analysis for our business and the current economic backdrop, we estimate our net sales in the March 2020 quarter to be up between 2% and 9% sequentially.  The midpoint of our guidance for the March 2020 quarter reflects what we believe our business can deliver assuming no extraordinary events.  However, the wider than normal guidance range is to help account for the uncertainty associated with the evolving Coronavirus situation.  We are still in the early days of how this situation is playing out.  We have no way to model how the rest of the quarter will play out for the Coronavirus situation, and what the consequent business impact may be, but we believe that our guidance range incorporates our best judgment for the possible scenarios."

Microchip's Highlights for the Quarter Ended December 31, 2019:

• Introduced the radiation-tolerant PolarFire^® FPGA, enabling high-throughput on-orbit processing space systems with very low power consumption and heat generation and optimized to meet the demanding requirements of spacecraft payload systems high-speed data paths.

• Announced the Early Access Program for the PolarFire^® system-on-chip (SoC) field programmable gate array (FPGA), offering the world’s first hardened real-time, Linux^® capable, RISC-V-based microprocessor subsystem on the award-winning, mid-range PolarFire FPGA family, bringing low power consumption, thermal efficiency and defense grade security to embedded systems.

• Introduced the next-generation Bluetooth 5.0-qualified dual-mode audio IC and fully certified module to help Bluetooth^® speaker and headphone manufacturers maintain product differentiation in the wireless audio market, with the 5.5 x 5.5 mm, low-power IS2083BM IC and the BM83 module.

• Delivered the new family of Serial Peripheral Interface EERAM memory products, providing system designers up to 25 percent cost savings over the current serial NVRAM alternatives. The family introduces four reliable SPI densities to Microchip’s EERAM portfolio.

• Introduced production-ready open source tools for managing its Adaptec^® Smart Storage HBA, SmartHBA and SmartRAID offerings in OpenStack data centers, to simplifies configuration, deployment and management of storage resources.

• Announced an added capability to Adaptec Smart Storage adapters, to now seamlessly interoperate with MegaRAC^® SP-X remote monitoring and diagnostics firmware from American Megatrends (AMI), supporting its MegaRAC solution development framework.

• Announced easing the transition with IEEE 802.3bt-2018-compliant PoE injectors and midspans for users and power sourcing equipment chipsets for system developers that enable both pre-standard and IEEE-compliant PDs to receive up to 90W of power without changing switches or cabling.

• Announced industry support for development of the Open Compute Project’s Accelerator Infrastructure form factors and interconnects through its PCIe® Switches that provide high-performance connectivity to enable interoperable artificial intelligence (AI) hardware accelerators.

Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2020 Outlook:

Beginning with the fiscal quarter ending March 31, 2019, we changed the information included in our financial guidance in response to comments from and discussions with the Staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  We are now providing net sales guidance based on sell-in revenue recognition under the new GAAP standard.  We are also providing guidance and reporting non-GAAP gross margin percentage, operating expense percentage, operating profit percentages and diluted earnings per share based on sell-in GAAP revenue.  We are also providing information on end-market demand so that investors will have information on the consumption in the marketplace of our products by our customers or our distributors.  We do not use end-market demand for any of our non-GAAP income statement calculations.  Please see "Use of End-Market Demand Metric" below for information on how we calculate end-market demand.