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Poetry in Silicon Motion

By Anders Bylund – Updated Apr 6, 2017 at 10:39PM

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Tablets and smartphones are so hot right now, and SSD storage always seems to be on the cusp of a breakthrough. This stock only needs one of those three markets to explode.

Shares of storage-controller designer Silicon Motion Technology (Nasdaq: SIMO) are up by more than 30% today. Do I really need to tell you how good the fourth-quarter earnings report was?

Analysts had expected flat sales and declining earnings compared to last quarter, but the company shocked 'em all with 17% sequential revenue growth and 12.5% higher earnings per depositary receipt.

Management said that storage controllers for solid-state drives and other flash-based memory products drove this outperformance. Samsung was a very good customer this quarter, which is always a nice feather in Silicon Motion's hat because Sammy is perfectly capable of whipping up controller chips on its own.

This micro-cap chip designer serves every part of the flash memory market, including market leaders Samsung and Micron Technology (Nasdaq: MU). Rabid demand for these chips should indicate healthy demand for the memory makers' end-user products as well. Memory chips may be getting cheaper, but that doesn't necessarily hurt the controller chips any.

Is this a flash-in-the-pan performance or the start of sustainable good news for Silicon Motion's shareholders? Our CAPS community seems to lean toward the "good news" side of things, judging by the five-star stock rating out of five and 98% ratio of thumbs-up calls. The stock is very reasonably valued in light of its growth prospects, assuming that tablets and smartphones stay hot for a few more years, and it's also an alternative avenue to investing in SSD storage without buying drive builders STEC (Nasdaq: STEC) or SMART Modular Technologies (Nasdaq: SMOD).

I'm giving Silicon Motion a thumbs-up rating in CAPS right now. I may have missed the ideal entry point when the stock was 30% cheaper, but there's still plenty of upside left in the stock. You can follow my all-star example in just a couple of clicks.

Fool contributor Anders Bylund holds no position in any of the companies discussed here. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. You can check out Anders' holdings and a concise bio if you like, and The Motley Fool is investors writing for investors.

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Stocks Mentioned

Micron Technology, Inc. Stock Quote
Micron Technology, Inc.
MU
$50.10 (0.89%) $0.44
Silicon Motion Technology Corporation Stock Quote
Silicon Motion Technology Corporation
SIMO
$68.84 (-1.71%) $-1.20

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