After disastrous guidance from 3M (MMM), which was promptly downgraded to 2M by the market, and ugly commentary from CAT which while beating expectations warned that "manufacturing costs were higher due to increased material and freight costs," adding that "material costs were higher primarily due to increases in steel prices and tariffs", moments ago semiconductor icon Texas Instruments became the latest company to sound a loud alarm on peak earnings.

In its just released earnings report, Texas Instruments not only reported Q3 earnings which missed on revenue of $4.26BN (below consensus $4.30), as analog revenue grew 8% and Embedded Processing declined 4% from the same quarter a year ago, while EPS of $1.58 beat the $1.53 consensus estimates (thanks to a 18% tax rate), but more importantly slashed Q4 revenue guidance, which is now expected in the range of $3.60 billion to $3.90 billion, below the $4 billion estimate, and Q4 EPS in the range of $1.14 to $1.34, also well below the $1.38 estimate.

The company did not provide details on why it is cutting its guidance but the market did not care and clobbered TXN stock after hours, sending it to 12 month lows.

The silver lining: like most of its peers, TXN has returned more cash than it generated to shareholders:

Free cash flow for the trailing 12 months was $5.9 billion, or 37.5 percent of revenue... We have returned $6.2 billion to owners in the past 12 months through stock repurchases and dividends.

Meanwhile, in what is surely just a coincidence, the Semiconductor index is back to where it was during the peak of the dot com bubble...