AUSTIN, TX -- National Instruments today announced preliminary estimated first-quarter revenues of $288 million, flat year-over-year in US currency.

The preliminary GAAP revenue estimate is $2 million below the low end of company guidance provided on Jan. 28.

Core revenue was up approximately 4% year-over-year. Core revenue is GAAP revenue excluding the impact of NI’s largest customer and the impact of foreign currency exchange.

Despite the earlier forecast for improvement in year-over-year revenue growth, NI said it saw further weakness in the industrial economy and a "marked slowdown" in semiconductor accounts that are part of the wireless supply chain.

The company said the weakness was most pronounced in the Americas, where revenue was down approximately 5% year-over-year. EMEIA revenues were down approximately 2%, the firm added, offset by 8% growth in Asia.

“While it is clear that the industrial economy, especially in the US, experienced a slowdown in the first quarter, 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, cofounder 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.”

“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.