News Release

SAN JOSE, Calif., July 19, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --

Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced second quarter sales of $548.4 million, up 2 percent from the first quarter of 2011 and up 17 percent from the second quarter of 2010. Second quarter net income was $214.6 million, $0.65 per diluted share, compared with net income of $224.1 million, $0.68 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2011 and $180.6 million, $0.58 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2010.

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Year-to-date cash flow from operating activities was $456.4 million. Altera ended the quarter with $3.3 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Altera's board of directors has increased the company's quarterly cash dividend to $0.08 per share, up from the previous dividend of $0.06 per share. The board of directors has declared that the next quarterly dividend will be paid on September 1, 2011 to stockholders of record on August 10, 2011.

"This quarter marks a return to sequential growth following the mild correction we experienced in the first quarter. We expect more sales gains in the third quarter," said John Daane, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board. "Early in the quarter we began shipping our Stratix V FPGA family, the industry's first high-end 28-nm FPGA. Our 28-nm FPGA families combine a tailored architecture, an optimal manufacturing process, and specific product features to give us continuing technology leadership that builds on the technology leadership and strong competitive position we established at 40 nm."

Several recent accomplishments mark the company's continuing progress:

• Altera was selected by EE Times as the 2010 Company of the Year. The Annual Creativity in Engineering (ACE) Company of the Year Award honors the company that exhibits the highest degree of professionalism, staff development and retention, customer focus, technical excellence and growth. Altera recently achieved several technological milestones that were significant innovations in the industry. In its next-generation 28-nm Stratix® V FPGA family, Altera included Embedded HardCopy® Blocks, variable-precision digital signal processing, and embedded 28-Gbps transceivers. The company also announced Qsys, the system-integration tool that delivers the industry's first FPGA-optimized network-on-chip-based interconnect. EE Times ACE Award finalists are nominated by an editorial panel. Award winners are determined by a panel of judges consisting of leading voices in academia, industry and Wall Street executives. Winning the EE Times ACE Company of the Year Award comes on the heels of Altera being named the best financially managed semiconductor company by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) in December 2010.
• Altera's Stratix V FPGAs received Application of Electronic Technique China magazine's (AET China) "2010 Top Product Award" in the programmable logic category. The Top Product Award recognizes technologies that have demonstrated the greatest innovations targeting the system design community. Winners of the Top Product Award were selected by AET China readers and industry experts who recognized Stratix V FPGAs for innovations in performance and power as well as the product's wide market application. This is the second consecutive year Altera has been honored by AET China with product awards. For more than 30 years, AET China has been a highly respected and trusted resource in the industry, providing unbiased opinions and informative news on electronics and computing industries. Stratix V FPGAs, the company's first 28-nm device family, began shipping in April, 2011. With 3.9 billion transistors, more than any other commercially available integrated circuit, Stratix V FPGAs have set a new semiconductor industry milestone. They are the only FPGAs to leverage TSMC's HP process which, when combined with optimizations in the FPGA, delivers better performance with lower power consumption than competing FPGAs.

Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call

A conference call will be held today at 1:45 p.m. Pacific Time to discuss the quarter's results and management's current business outlook. The web cast and subsequent replay will be available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.altera.com. A telephonic replay of the call may be accessed later in the day by calling (719) 457-0820 and referencing confirmation code 258712. The telephonic replay will be available for two weeks following the live call.

Third Quarter Update

Altera's third quarter business update will be issued in a press release available after the market close on September 6, 2011.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this press release that are not historical are "forward-looking statements" as the term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are generally written in the future tense and/or preceded by words such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," or other words that imply or predict a future state. Forward-looking statements include any projection of revenue, gross margin, expense or other financial items discussed in the Business Outlook section or elsewhere in this press release. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this release involve risks and uncertainty that can cause actual results to differ from those currently anticipated, due to a number of factors, including without limitation, current global economic conditions, supply chain or demand impacts from the recent Japanese earthquake, customer business environment, customer inventory levels, vertical market mix, market acceptance of the company's products, product introduction schedules, the rate of growth of the company's new products including Cyclone® IV, Arria® II, Stratix® V, Stratix IV FPGAs, MAX® V CPLDs and HardCopy® IV device families, changes in the mix of our business between prototyping and production-based demand, as well as changes in economic conditions and other risk factors discussed in documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from time to time. Copies of Altera's SEC filings are posted on the company's website and are available from the company without charge. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this release, and, except as required by law, the company does not undertake an obligation to update its forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

About Altera

Altera programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more about Altera's FPGA, CPLD and ASIC devices at www.altera.com. Follow Altera via Facebook, RSS and Twitter.

ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, NIOS, QUARTUS, STRATIX words and logos are trademarks of Altera Corporation and registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other words and logos identified as trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective holders as described at www.altera.com/legal.

Product Category Description

• New Products include the Stratix V®, Stratix® IV (including E, GX and GT), Arria® II (including GX and GZ), Cyclone® IV (including E and GX), MAX® V, and HardCopy® IV devices.
• Mainstream Products include the Stratix III, Cyclone III, MAX® II, and HardCopy III devices.
• Mature and Other Products include the Stratix II (and GX), Stratix (and GX), Arria GX, Cyclone II, Cyclone, Classic(TM), MAX 3000A, MAX 7000, MAX 7000A, MAX 7000B, MAX 7000S, MAX 9000, HardCopy II, HardCopy, FLEX® series, APEX(TM) series, Mercury(TM), and Excalibur(TM) devices, configuration and other devices, intellectual property cores, and software and other tools.

SOURCE Altera Corporation