ANALOG DEVICES SHARES AT THE READY (NYSE:ADI)

After posting strong earnings yesterday, shares of Analog Devices, Inc. (NYSE:ADI) are sitting at a pivotal point.  Investors were not quite satisfied as the stock opened lower at $35.52, down $0.44 at the open.  The slight gap down could also be due to the overall market worries.  Now the stock sits right at the overhead resistance level of $35.75 and it is time to watch for a breakout above that level, providing the overall market doesn’t drag the stock down.

The news for ADI is not all bad though.  Currently the stock is rated a strong buy (96%) by barchart.com, which is up substantially from a week ago when it was only rated a soft buy at 32%.  Currently the company has one-year sales of $2.56B with a one-year income $591.84M.  The numbers present a one-year sales growth of 38% and one-year income growth of 243% (boo-yeah!)  Their net profit margin is currently 23.1%, which is up from the 5-year average of 18.9%, indicating some profit and sale momentum.  Their debt to equity is 0.13, and that is lower than the broad line semiconductor group’s 0.21.

With a current P/E multiple of 18.4 and the average analysts’ estimates for 10/2011 on the company being $2.57 per share, that works out to a projected average price of $47.29.  That is a hefty 32% price increase projected for the stock in 2011.  However, analysts are currently rating the stock only a Moderate Buy with the consensus recommendation being 1.9 on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = buy and 5 = sell).

Good luck to investors of ADI.

Analog Devices, Inc. (Analog Devices) designs, manufactures and markets analog, mixed-signal and digital signal processing integrated circuits (ICs) used in industrial, communication, computer and consumer applications. The Company’s signal processing products translates light, sound, temperature, motion and pressure into electrical signals to be used in a range of electronic equipment.