DALLAS—Texas Instruments Inc. said Tuesday that trouble in global credit markets led to the failure of auctions of securities it held.
The Dallas-based semiconductor company said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it had invested $1.04 billion in auction-rate securities as of Dec. 31 and sold those down to less than $575 million by mid-February.
At that point, "liquidity issues in the global credit markets resulted in the failure of auctions representing substantially all of the auction-rate securities we hold" because the amount of securities offered for auction exceeded the amount of bids, the company said in the filing.
Texas Instruments said substantially all of its auction-rate investments are backed by pools of student loans guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Education.
The company said it still believes the credit quality of the securities is high because of the federal guarantee.
Texas Instruments said the auction failures will limit its ability to sell the securities "for some period of time." But, it added, they won't have a material effect on capital spending or other business needs.
