Still in Love With Dolby Labs

Spice up your Valentine's Day with even more smokin' hot investments.

I'm beginning to feel like a stalker. I'm reprising my role again this year as Cyrano de Bergerac and composing love letters to Dolby Labs (NYSE: DLB) for investors who may not have the voice to do it on their own.

O Dolby, Dolby, wherefore art thou, Dolby?

OK, I'm mixing my playwrights here, but there's a lot to love when it comes to the leading sound-technology company. Quarter after quarter, it becomes more apparent that from wherever sound emanates, there's probably a "double D" logo close by.

DVD players, computers, TVs, movie theaters, and, soon, mobile communication devices -- all are crammed with Dolby technology. The games we play, the movies we watch, the sounds we hear are all made better through Dolby magic. Sure, there's competing technology out there -- you're almost as likely to find the DTS (Nasdaq: DTSI) logo on as many products -- but when it comes to industry standards and advancing the technology, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation is clearly in the forefront.

Whether they're DVD standalone units or packaged in your PC, Dolby licenses are incorporated by manufacturers into them. Analysts have been expecting sales to falter, but instead, they continue to boost Dolby's profits higher. The computers they come packaged in are not as moribund as headlines might suggest.

Quanta Computer, for example, a contract manufacturer for Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), reported last month that it shipped 2 million more computers last year than it previously planned for and was raising its 2008 shipment target 11% for a total of 40 million. Quanta is expecting the notebook market to grow up to 30% this year.

In the broadcast market, demand for digital televisions drove revenues that accounted for over 15% of licensing revenue last fiscal year. Expect Dolby's recent acquisition of Coding Technologies to advance broadcast, mobile, and digital music sales going forward, too.

Of course, a major driver for growth has been another area where analysts underestimated potential. The Vista operating system from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has simply been far more successful than the Wizards of Redmond have been given credit for. Dolby's licensing revenues were up 19% sequentially last quarter, precisely because Microsoft has been so successful at moving its new OS despite bad reviews and analyst reluctance to acknowledge those sales.

With new technologies and new formats accepting Dolby's leadership (digital cinema may be the next milestone for it), the sound technician, even at these lofty valuations, can still represent a good entry point.

"There is always some madness in love," Nietzsche once said, "But there is also always some reason in madness." I think investors have every reason to be madly in love with Dolby.

Love Dolby? Then you'll love these related Foolish articles:

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