NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Despite record quarterly revenue that rose 10 percent from a year ago, shares of chipmaker Texas Instruments tumbled more than three percent in after-hours trading on its lower-than-expected targets for fourth-quarter sales.

TI (Research) said it expects sales in the fourth quarter of between $3.43 billion to $3.72 billion; the midpoint of that range is below Wall Street's fourth-quarter revenue estimate of $3.63 billion. Some Wall Street analysts say that's why TI's shares have fallen from Monday's closing price of $30.92.

"I think it was a great quarter, but no matter what they would have said, there would have been a selloff today," said Mona Eraiba, an analyst with Rosetta Group Research. "A lot of people are just nervous overall. What the issue is for a lot of people is, we don't know macroeconomic issues for the industry."

Texas Instruments reported third-quarter revenues of $3.59 billion, ahead of Wall Street expectations of $3.55 billion. Net income rose 12 percent year over year, to $631 million.

While its earnings per share came in at $0.38, which was below Wall Street expectations, they beat the Wall Street forecast excluding a $0.03 charge for the cost of expensing stock options granted to workers and $0.01 for higher-than-expected taxes. Minus those charges, the earnings per share would have come in at $0.42, which is 2 cents ahead of analyst estimates of $0.40, according to Thomson First Call estimates.

But TI executives said the company also faces lower than expected inventories because of strong demand throughout the third quarter.

"We depleted our inventory by more than $40 million dollars; almost all that drawdown was out of finished goods," said Kevin March, TI's chief financial officer, during a conference call with analysts. "Our ability to respond to in-quarter surges could be limited."

Eraiba said it's not just TI; other chipmakers have also been running on a lean inventory.

"After the shock at end of last year, when people were struggling with excess inventory, a lot of companies said we have to be more careful and muted expectation for demand, especially in the handset market," she said.

The company posted new highs for gross margins, at 49.3 percent, for operating margin at 22.7 percent, and for operating cash flow at $1.51 billion. The company posted semiconductor revenue of $3.13 billion, a 13 percent increase from a year ago due to higher cell phone demand.

Kevin Vassily, a research analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, said that while the short-term focus is clearly on the lower than expected revenue forecast, the negative sentiment reflected in the company's share price on the news may be an overreaction.

"If I were a company operating in this environment, I'd rather be posting better margins on slightly lower revenue than vice versa," he said. "The other way around suggests there was a need to cut prices to move product. Maybe they're being conservative going into the fourth quarter, or maybe analyst models are getting ahead of themselves, which I think is actually a possibility."

Eraiba pointed out that while some analysts thought that TI had hit peak levels for gross margins, the company produced better than expected margins.

"The stock peaks when margin peaks, but they alerady exceeded the margin of the previous cycle, and they still have room to improve margin going forward," she said.

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Eraiba owns shares of TI, but her firm has no banking ties to the company. None of the other analysts quoted in this story own shares of TI, and their firms have no banking ties to the company.