J.P Morgan Comments On National Instruments Following Management Meeting

J.P Morgan's meetings with National Insruments NATI were positive, longer term in nature, and supported its positive view on the stock. OPEX related to the company's headcount expansion is likely to be offset by strong top-line growth and other factors in 2011, enabling the company to likely reach its long-term target of 18% operating margins. Simply put, NATI is creating new markets and disrupting existing ones to expand its revenue opportunities. The company's hardware offerings now have the capability to address applications requiring 1GHz and greater sampling rates. This is important as approximately half the T&M industry's revenues and even more of the gross margin dollars are found above this threshold. NI's strong product pipeline alongside its lower cost virtual instrumentation proposition has enabled it to outperform its peers' revenue profile in recent years. NI reiterated its intent to continue to invest into new opportunities such as RF and semi test. NI's strong new products and software differentiation is enabling market share gains, and the company appears well positioned to be a major benefactor in a coordinated global recovery scenario. J.P Morgan has an Overweight rating on NATI NATI closed Friday at $46.59