Fairchild Semiconductor Growth Rate Continues to Outpace Semiconductor Industry Overall

Business Wire, May 16, 2001

Business/Technology Editors

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NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2001

Joseph Martin, Fairchild's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Cites Acquisition and New Product Strategies as Key

to Company's Accelerated Growth

Fairchild's Six Acquisitions in Less than Four Years Have Helped

Triple Revenues While Fueling Growth in Excess of 200%

Product Portfolio Now Addresses Virtually All Electronics Markets

Fairchild Semiconductor International (NYSE: FCS) today articulated its acquisition and new product development strategy for participants at the CIBC World Markets Annual Conference - a strategy that has enabled the firm to achieve growth rates that far outpace the semiconductor industry as a whole.

Fairchild Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Joseph Martin stated that his organization's strategy of identifying and acquiring companies integral to Fairchild's expansion of products and markets during down cycles provides immediate benefits while concurrently strengthening Fairchild for when business cycles experience upturns.

"Since becoming independent in 1997, we've been aggressive about our plans to grow Fairchild through acquisitions and new products," Martin said. "By doing so, we've defined the multi-market semiconductor business and have established a highly successful model that takes complete advantage of that opportunity. This strategy has enabled us to outgrow the industry significantly while tripling our revenues in less than four years. With power requirements growing more complex and expanding into virtually all electronics applications, Fairchild sees power components as one of the most important and fastest growing areas in our multi-market strategy. Fairchild products are sold today into nearly every electronics market. We intend to continue our growth trajectory through new product development and more acquisitions."

"Timing has also played a key role," Martin continued "and we've tended to accelerate our acquisitions during down cycles to leverage the opportunity and be in the best position when the cycles turn positive. This strategy has paid huge dividends in enabling us to leapfrog our competition in market share growth and customer demand."

"Our criteria for acquisition remains a combination of companies that broaden our product portfolio with a presence in optimal geographic regions and in new end markets for Fairchild. For example, our recent acquisition of Intersil's Discrete Power business enabled us to become the leading global supplier of broadbased power components; strengthened our dominance in the U.S. and Europe; extended us into high growth automotive and industrial markets; added significant patents and intellectual property to our portfolio; and provided new, advanced manufacturing facilities," Martin said.

Fairchild Semiconductor International (NYSE:FCS) is a leading global supplier of high performance products for multiple end markets. With a focus on developing leading edge power and interface solutions to enable the electronics of today and tomorrow, Fairchild's components are used in computing, communications, consumer, industrial, automotive and aerospace applications. Fairchild's 11,000 employees design, manufacture and market power, analog & mixed signal, interface, logic, and optoelectronics products from its headquarters in South Portland, Maine, USA and numerous locations around the world. Please contact us on the web at www.fairchildsemi.com.

Special Note on Forward Looking Statements:

Some statements in this news release are forward-looking statements that are based on management's assumptions and expectations and that involve risk and uncertainty. Forward-looking statements usually, but do not always, contain forward-looking terminology such as "we believe," "we expect," or "we anticipate," or refer to management's expectations about Fairchild's future performance. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements. Among these factors are the following: changes in overall economic conditions; changes in demand for our products; changes in inventories at our customers and distributors; technological and product development risks; availability of manufacturing capacity; availability of raw materials; competitors' actions; loss of key customers; order cancellations or reduced bookings; changes in manufacturing yields or output; and significant litigation. Other risk factors are listed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000 (see the Risk Factors subsection of the Business section), available at the Investor Relations section of Fairchild Semiconductor's web site at investor.fairchildsemi.com or the Securities and Exchange Commission's web site at www.sec.gov.

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