Polycom Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

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 video conferencing specialist Polycom (NAS: PLCM) surged 16% on Tuesday after the company's fourth-quarter results easily topped Wall Street expectations.

So what: Polycom shares have been crushed over the past six months on weak revenue growth, but its market-thumping quarter -- adjusted EPS of $0.41 versus the consensus of just $0.29 -- is forcing analysts to quickly increase their growth expectations. Sales were particularly strong in emerging markets, suggesting that fears over big market share losses to gorilla rival Cisco Systems are a tad overblown.

Now what: Don't let today's rally keep you from looking into the stock. "Polycom's cloud, mobility, and software-driven infrastructure strategy is beginning to yield and we look forward to another year of solid growth in 2012," said CEO Andrew Miller. More importantly, with a stock that's still off about 35% from its 52-week high and a balance sheet with zero debt, Polycom's downside seems limited.

Interested in more info onPolycom?Add it to your watchlist.

At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Polycom and Cisco. The Fool owns of shares Cisco. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Fool's disclosure policy always gets a perfect score.

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