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 Lattice Semiconductor (LSCC -0.65%) jumped more than 10% during Friday's intraday trading, then settled up around 8% after the company turned in better-than-expected first-quarter results.
So what: Quarterly revenue rose 35.7% year over year to $96.6 million, which translated to a five-fold increase in net income per share to $0.10. Analysts, on average, were looking for earnings of just $0.06 per share on sales of $89.33 million.
In addition, Lattice expects current-quarter revenue to be "flat to plus 4% on a sequential basis," which results in a range of roughly $96.6 million to $100.5 million. By comparison, analysts were modeling second-quarter revenue of only $91.33 million.
Now what: CEO Darin Billerbeck added: "Q1 revenue and net income growth were led by continued momentum in revenue from new products. [...] We remain focused on becoming the undisputed leader in providing low cost, low power, small footprint FPGAs to applications where time-to-market is crucial."
Billerbeck's elaboration indicates that Lattice is firing on all cylinders, benefiting from increased scale and sustained product cost reductions, as well as strength across multiple fronts including the consumer market, China communications market, and broader market improvement in European distribution channels. Assuming Lattice can maintain its momentum, and with shares trading at a reasonable 22 times next year's expected earnings, I see no reason the stock can't continue to climb from here.
