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 Silicon Motion Technology Corp. (SIMO 0.45%) jumped 16% Tuesday after the company announced better-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter 2013 results.
So what: Quarterly revenue came in at $52.5 million, which translated to adjusted earnings of $0.30 per diluted share. By contrast, analysts were only looking for earnings of just $0.21 per share on sales of $51.87 million.
For the current quarter, Silicon Motion expects revenue to arrive flat to down 10% sequentially as gross margins remain steady in the 48% to 50% range. That puts Q1 revenue in the range of $47.25 to $52.5 million, or slightly below average expectations of $51.56 million.
For the full year 2014, however, they expect revenue to increase 5% to 15%, or a range of $236.6 million to $259.1 million, the midpoint of which is well ahead of expectations for fiscal 2014 sales of $236.6 million.
Now what: Things seem to be progressing nicely in Silicon Motion's transition away from removable storage controllers, and toward more promising growth markets. And remember, that transition notably took a leap forward last quarter with the introduction of Silicon Motion's new SATA II client SSD controllers and LTE-Advanced receivers.
This time, Silicon Motion CEO Wallace Kou was happy to announce "the testing of our new LTE-Advanced receiver paired with Samsung's new LTE-Advanced baseband is nearing completion for our first flagship win at Samsung's 2014 smartphone lineup."
That's a big win for Silicon Motion shareholders. Assuming all goes as planned, and with shares currently trading at a modest 19.6 times trailing earnings and 16.8 times next year's estimates, I think Silicon Motion stock could still prove a bargain for patient investors over the long-term.
