Polycom Shares Popped: What You Need to Know (PLCM)

Polycom Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

Watch stocks you care about

The single, easiest way to keep track of all the stocks that matter...

Your own personalized stock watchlist!

It's a 100% FREE Motley Fool service...

Click Here Now

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of video conferencing specialist Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM ) surged 16% on Tuesday after the company's fourth-quarter results easily topped Wall Street expectations.

So what: Polycom shares have been crushed over the past six months on weak revenue growth, but its market-thumping quarter -- adjusted EPS of $0.41 versus the consensus of just $0.29 -- is forcing analysts to quickly increase their growth expectations. Sales were particularly strong in emerging markets, suggesting that fears over big market share losses to gorilla rival Cisco Systems are a tad overblown.

Now what: Don't let today's rally keep you from looking into the stock. "Polycom's cloud, mobility, and software-driven infrastructure strategy is beginning to yield and we look forward to another year of solid growth in 2012," said CEO Andrew Miller. More importantly, with a stock that's still off about 35% from its 52-week high and a balance sheet with zero debt, Polycom's downside seems limited.

Interested in more info on Polycom? Add it to your watchlist.

The Steve Jobs Betrayal
You may already know that in the final year of his life, Jobs revealed a stunning betrayal — and told his biographer, "I will spend my last dying breath... and every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong." What was it that made Jobs so irate — and why could it make a few in-the-know investors some major profits over the coming months and years?

Enter your email address below to find out what made Jobs so enraged!

Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Polycom and Cisco. The Fool owns of shares Cisco. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Fool's disclosure policy always gets a perfect score.

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment icon found on every comment.