Winning For Our Shareholders
Vince Lombardi, one of American football's greatest coaching legends, is famous for telling his team, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing!" During the last several years, in this shareholder letter we have consistently defined our vision of winning - of crossing the goal line - as "maximizing return to our shareholders." We measure these returns by achieving:

• Higher profitability,
• Better returns on our invested capital (ROIC) and
• An increased emphasis on our higher margin analog business

National Semiconductor is out to win. We want to cross the goal line as often as possible. Before discussing our analog business, let's briefly review our scorecard and look at the yardage we've gained in increasing shareholder value. We recognize that winning is not just turning in a few good quarters, but rather, building a team that strives to win consistently year after year. So, in this letter, we will focus upon the trends and, also, the actions that we have taken to ensure that National's business continues to grow in the right direction.