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 Himax Technologies (HIMX) opened 11% lower Thursday morning following the release of the company's first-quarter results and then quickly recovered to positive territory as the day wore on.
So what: Quarterly net revenue rose 10.8% year over year to $194.6 million, which translated to an 8% increase in adjusted net income to $16.2 million, or $0.094 per diluted American depositary share. Analysts, on average, were looking for adjusted earnings of $0.10 per share on sales of $194.2 million.
For the second quarter, Himax expects revenue to be flat sequentially, with adjusted earnings of $0.13 to $0.15 per diluted American depositary share. By comparison, analysts expected second-quarter earnings of $0.13 per share on sales of $223.2 million.
Now what: Himax CEO Jordan Wu elaborated on the top-line guidance miss: "Though we see some headwinds during the second quarter with a certain end-customer's inventory position, we expect this to clear in the second half of the year. We often times need to remind investors of the normal volatility in the semi industry to which we are not immune."
That's fair enough, which explains why Himax stock recovered quickly from the market's knee-jerk reaction this morning. Apart from that, there were no big surprises in today's report. With shares currently trading at a low 10.4 times next year's expected earnings, I think Himax stock looks like an attractive bet for long-term investors.
