News & Events
Intersil Announces Third Consecutive Record Quarter

— Orders increase 62%, revenues expand 63% over 1999
— Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) at $0.24
— PRISM^® Wireless sales grow 104% sequentially to $44.2 million

IRVINE, Calif. - October 19, 2000 - Intersil Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: ISIL) today reported record financial results for the quarter ended September 29, 2000. Compared to the same period in the prior year, orders were up 62% and sales grew 63% to $218.6 million. Compared to the previous quarter, overall sales increased 14%. Adjusted net income, before amortization and one-time charges, was $24.8 million or $0.24 per diluted share of common stock.

"Intersil achieved excellent financial results during the quarter," said Greg Williams, Intersil's President and CEO. "Strong demand for our PRISM wireless access solutions coupled with record revenue from our communications analog products resulted in performance that exceeded expectations. PRISM sales accounted for more than 20% of total Intersil revenues during the quarter, driven by strong market demand for wireless to broadband access. We continued to increase orders and sales from market leaders including Cisco, 3Com and Symbol Technologies. Our gross margins improved 310 basis points over last quarter to 46.3% as a result of a richer mix of communications products."

"Intersil is establishing a leadership position in the emerging wireless access market," added Williams. "During the quarter we announced our intentions to acquire, and this week concluded our acquisition of SiCOM, a leader in broadband wireless access technology. Intersil also made a strategic investment in Silicon Wave, a leader in Bluetooth personal networking technology. We completed an investment in Sygate® Technologies (formerly Sybergen Networks), with plans to develop roaming Internet Protocol software to support remote personal wireless access. Our strategic initiatives are consistent with Intersil's unrelenting focus on the development of leading wireless connectivity solutions."

Results by Product Group

PRISM® Wireless
Intersil's PRISM Wireless sales grew 601% from the same quarter in 1999 and were up nearly 104% from the previous quarter to $44.2 million. PRISM orders soared 605% over the same quarter last year, as many of Intersil's customers' new products are entering volume production.

"Intersil's PRISM has clearly been established as the architecture of choice for leading customers in home, enterprise and mobile high-data-rate wireless access markets, and the ramp-up of our 11 megabit PRISM II product has exceeded expectations," said Williams. "We shipped our two-millionth PRISM II chip set in September, only two months after completing the first million shipments. Our new four-chip radio is being sampled today on smaller miniPCI and embedded platforms. These new miniature radios are being designed into next generation mobile appliances that will be announced in the next several months."

Intersil showcased several PRISM-powered products at September's Networld+Interop show including Alcatel's innovative Speed Touch™ home gateway product, SpectraLink's Voice over Internet phone and Compaq's new iPAQ hand-held Internet appliance utilizing Microsoft Windows CE.

Analog & Mixed-Signal
Intersil's Analog & Mixed-Signal sales were a record $122.0 million during the third quarter, resulting in growth of 47% compared with the same period in 1999. Orders increased 31% over the same period last year.

"We are making significant progress in changing our product mix to address communications, achieving 63% year on year growth in the communications portion of our analog portfolio," said Williams. "We continue to see strong demand and are gaining market share in power management products, particularly our Endura family of multiphase controller ICs for high performance microprocessors. During the third quarter we announced the shipment of our 100-millionth Endura product, which now manages power for more than half of the world's AMD Athlon processors. Intersil also continues to expand its portfolio of integrated circuits used in servers that include advanced power management features like 'hot swap' the ability to replace defective boards without powering down the network."

Discrete Power
When compared to the same quarter of 1999, Intersil's Discrete Power sales grew 17% to $52.5 million, while orders increased 26%.

"Intersil's Discrete Power products continue to win many new designs with leading customers in networking, computing and communications," added Williams. "In a quarter that we usually experience some seasonal weakness, we saw no drop in overall discrete power sales from the prior quarter. Intersil continues to ramp up production of new products and we're winning new designs with our fast-switching SMPS IGBTs, our soft recovery Stealth Diodes and Dense Trench MOSFETs. These high efficiency MOSFETs built in our state-of-the-art, eight-inch discrete power fab are now in our customers' hands and are being designed into next generation products."

Business Outlook
"Intersil continues to make progress resulting from our unrelenting focus on wireless access and communications markets," said Williams. "We anticipate sequential growth in revenues, gross margins and earnings per share during our fourth calendar quarter. We now expect our fourth quarter revenues to grow approximately 45% over the same quarter last year. This will result in overall Intersil revenue growth for calendar year 2000 of 40%. Driven by our strong wireless access growth and our improved mix in communications analog, our preliminary outlook for 2001 is for growth of approximately 30% to more than $1 billion."

For individuals interested in hearing a more detailed analysis of the Company's performance during the quarter, a conference call will be held on October 19 at 4:30 PM Eastern. If you would like to participate, please dial (800) 967-7184 and provide the operator with identification number 539114 to be connected.

About Intersil
Irvine, California-based Intersil uses its semiconductor expertise to enable highly integrated voice, data and video communications. Intersil's integrated communications portfolio includes PRISM® Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) chip sets that enable mobile connectivity products for the home and office; analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for broadband access to wireless and wired Wide Area Networks (WANs); and power management products that enable 24X7 reliability in network servers, next generation PCs and information appliances. For more information about Intersil, visit the Company's Internet homepage at www.intersil.com.

This press release contains information relating to certain projections and business trends that are forward looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward looking statements are based upon management's current expectations, estimates, beliefs, assumptions, and projections about our business and industry. Words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will" and variations of these words or similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward looking statements. These forward looking statements about certain business and market trends are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, our actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward looking statements as a result of various risk factors. Important risk factors that may cause such material differences for Intersil Holding Corporation ("Intersil") in connection with the wireless, analog and mixed signal, and discrete power markets include, but are not limited to, the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Intersil's wireless, analog and mixed signal, and discrete power technologies and products; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders; the loss of a key customer; the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products; silicon wafer pricing and the availability of foundry and assembly capacity and raw materials; intellectual property disputes; as well as other risk factors detailed from time to time in Intersil's filings with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission ("SEC")which you may obtain for free at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. These forward looking statements are made only as of the date of this press release and Intersil undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward looking statements.

PRISM is a registered trademark, and Endura, Stealth and Dense Trench are trademarks of Intersil Corporation.

Alcatel, AMD, Cisco, Compaq, Microsoft, Sygate, 3Com, SpectraLink and Symbol Technologies are trademarks of those respective companies in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.