Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, programmable logic chip specialist Altera (Nasdaq: ALTR) has earned a respected four-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Altera's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Altera facts

Headquarters (Founded) San Jose, Calif. (1983)
Market Cap $12.2 billion
Industry Semiconductors
Trailing-12-Month Revenue $2.16 billion
Management

Chairman/CEO John Daane

CFO Ronald Pasek
Return on Equity (Average, Past 3 Years) 35.5%
Cash/Debt $3.24 billion / $500 million
Dividend Yield 0.9%
Competitors

Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM)

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC)

Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN)

Sources: S&P Capital IQ and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 92% of the 368 members who have rated Altera believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include Etrexer and Gooman64.

This past summer, Etrexer listed several of Altera's positives: "Profitability, industry leadership, market growth, efficiency, and stability -- all these are positive signs coming from ALTR."

In fact, Altera boasts a robust three-year average operating margin of 36.4%. That's higher than that of larger competitors like Broadcom (7.9%), Intel (29.7%), and Texas Instruments (24.8%).

CAPS member Gooman64 offers some firsthand insight into Altera's technology:

Used the FPGA chips designed by Altera while I was in school. They were definitely a bit tricky to code, but boy were they amazing. Lots you can do with these things. In my case, wrote a wonderful blackjack program that outputted to VGA screen. These things if done right, can replace any type of logic chips. Great and fun products.

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