National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) announced that its preliminary estimate for revenue in the first quarter of 2016 is $288 million, essentially flat year-over-year in U.S. dollar terms with core revenue up approximately 4 percent year-over-year. This preliminary GAAP revenue estimate is $2 million below the low end of the guidance the company provided on January 28, 2016. The company’s definition of core revenue is GAAP revenue excluding the impact of NI’s largest customer and the impact of foreign currency exchange. A reconciliation of GAAP revenue to core revenue is included with this news release.

*** The Street sees Q1 revenue of $303 million.

On our earnings call in January, we anticipated an improvement in our year-over-year revenue growth in Q1. Unfortunately, we saw further weakness in the industrial economy with Q1 having the lowest Global PMI in three years. Additionally, we saw a marked slow-down in our semiconductor accounts that are part of the wireless supply chain. The weakness during the quarter was most pronounced in the Americas with revenue down approximately 5 percent year-over-year while in EMEIA revenues were down approximately 2 percent year-over-year. Revenue growth in Asia was strong at approximately 8 percent year-over-year.

“While it is clear that the industrial economy, especially in the U.S., experienced a slowdown in Q1, we believe the diversity of our business and the solid execution of our sales force allowed us to continue to gain market share,” said James Truchard, NI president, co-founder and CEO. “Going forward, we plan to be very disciplined in managing our expenses, while working to ensure that our highly differentiated platform and broad ecosystem continues to help engineers and scientists address their test, measurement and control needs.”

NI currently expects that GAAP fully diluted earnings per share (EPS) will be in the range of $0.06 to $0.07 per share for Q1 with non-GAAP fully diluted EPS to be in the range of $0.14 to $0.15 per share.

*** The Street expects Q1 EPS of $0.16.

With $333M in cash and cash equivalents at the end of December, the company’s balance sheet continues to be very strong.

“In light of the uncertain outlook for the industrial economy, we plan to leverage the strategic investments we have already made, while managing expenses carefully,” said Alex Davern, NI COO and CFO. “Looking forward we will be focused on driving operating leverage while gaining market share through our differentiated platform.”

The company will provide final results and detailed guidance for Q2 2016 in its Q1 2016 earnings conference call on April 28, 2016, at 4:00 p.m. CT.

Conference Call Information and Availability of Presentation Materials

Interested parties can listen to the Q1 2016 preliminary earnings conference call with NI management today, April 4, at 4:00 p.m. CT at ni.com/call. Replay information is available by calling (855) 859-2056, confirmation code 84533078 shortly after the call through April 7, at 11:00 p.m. CT, or by visiting the company’s website at ni.com/call. Presentation materials referred to on the conference call can also be found at ni.com/nati.