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 Silicom Ltd. (SILC +5.85%) rose nearly 30% Thursday after the high-performance networking specialist absolutely crushed expectations with its fourth-quarter earnings report.
So what: Quarterly sales jumped 52% year over year to a company record $25.4 million, while adjusted net income doubled during the same period to $0.94 per diluted share. By contrast, analysts were only modeling earnings of $0.70 per share on sales of $20.64 million.
Now what: CEO Shaike Orbach weighed in: "With continued success in the markets that have driven us to this point and exciting new markets ahead, we believe Silicom is positioned for continued faster-than-market growth."
But we should also remember Silicom doesn't provide specific quarterly guidance, so it's hard to blame analysts for getting this one wrong. With this in mind, if Silicom is able to successfully maintain anywhere near today's levels of stellar growth going forward, the stock admittedly looks cheap trading around 32 times last year's earnings, and 24 times next year's estimates.
