LSI 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 data storage and networking chip maker LSI (NYS: LSI) climbed 11% on Thursday after the company's quarterly earnings and guidance topped Wall Street expectations.

So what: LSI's fourth-quarter revenue came in below estimates, but a beat on the bottom line -- adjusted EPS of $0.13 versus the average estimate of $0.10 -- coupled with a strong near-term outlook is forcing investors to raise their growth expectations yet again. In fact, the stock is hitting a new 52-week high on the news.

Now what: Looking ahead, management now sees first-quarter revenue of $550 million to $590 million, which was also well ahead of the average analyst estimate of $508.7 million. "We enter 2012 building on strong business momentum," said CEO Abhi Talwalkar, "and are accelerating our revenue growth with share gains and new design wins at key customers and in critical markets such as mega datacenters, cloud computing, mobile networks, and flash storage." More importantly, with the stock trading at a forward P/E of 11, that growth potential still seems reasonably priced.

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At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. 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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