RealMoney by TheStreet.com
After SIRF's Pounding, the Stock Is Dirt-Cheap
Wednesday February 6, 11:01 am ET
ByJay Somaney, RealMoney.com Contributor
SiRF Technology , a maker of GPS semiconductors, got taken apart in trading Monday after the company reported earnings of 28 cents a share on revenues of $100.4 million; analysts expected 32 cents a share on revenues of $101 million.
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So, an earnings shortfall of 4 cents a share and a revenue shortfall of $600,000 caused the good guys to shatter the market capitalization of SIRF by a hair under 55%. Makes sense to me.
Wait, no it doesn't.
I say that SIRF is an absolute screaming buy here if only for one compelling reason: SIRF is now dirt-cheap and a prime takeover candidate.
The company has $139.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt whatsoever. Using the fully diluted share count of 60.7 million shares at the end of the December quarter, that works out to $2.30 a share in net cash.
After all the cheerleaders were done slashing their numbers, we have new estimates of 55 cents a share in earnings for 2008 and 77 cents a share for 2009. Before Monday's earnings report, the genius sell-siders were expecting earnings of $1.32 a share for 2008 and $1.49 a share for 2009. Oops!
The sell-siders have lowered their revenue expectations for 2008 to $378.5 million and for 2009 to $440.2 million. Before the results, they were at $446 million for 2008 and $530.6 million for 2009. Slight oops again!
So after Monday's shellacking, SIRF trades at 9.2 times (factoring out the $2.30 a share in net cash) estimated 2008 earnings of 55 cents a share and at 6.5 times estimated earnings of 77 cents a share for 2009.
Using market cap (again factoring out net cash) to revenue multiple, SIRF is now valued at 0.81 times estimated 2008 revenue of $378.5 million for 2008 and at 0.70 times estimated revenues of $440.2 million for 2009.
Estimated revenue growth for SIRF is now 16% (2009 over 2008) and earnings growth is 40% (again 2009 over 2008).
SIRF is dirt-cheap anyway you look at it, despite concerns of coming market-share losses, pricing and competitive pressures, and any other stuff the sell-siders have come up with to justify their slashing of estimates.
I am not saying by any means that the company is not in the penalty box. It surely is, but at these valuations, it will not remain in the penalty box for too long.
In addition, I am not dismissing the poor outlook provided by the company, including an expected small loss to break-even for the first quarter with gross margins guidance of 50% going forward for now.
However, the strength in their Research In Motion business and design wins at Motorola and Lenovo could at least partially offset the slightly-less-than-expected sales at Garmin and Mio going forward, based on last week's announcement from the latter two regarding cellular-based products, which could be an issue for SIRF.
I took a good-guy shot at SIRF in Monday's pounding and stand ready to buy more in case the stock comes in more today.
I think a buyout will happen sooner rather than later.
In the current shoot-first-ask-questions-later environment, SIRF could prove a sweet gift in a few weeks or months.
Until the next time, happy investing.
