STEC beats, raises

Current quarter beats consensus coming in at 56.2 mil with street at 53.1 mil. EPS beat by a penny, coming in at 9 cents. Gross margins came in above consensus at 35.3% with the street closer to 34.4%. Operating income was 6.7 mil, street was looking for ~5.3 mil. Guidance of 61-63 mil and 10-11 cents, street is at 59.4 mil and 10 cents. Inventory jumped to 78 mil from 39 mil q/q. The company had raised 35 mil to build inventory for anticipated growth and new design wins -- they say in their press release they expect inventory days to trend down over the next several quarters. The company indicates they had a second major enterprise OEM win. They have been qualified at several notebook vendors and expect to begin shipment into that market next quarter.

All in all, a beat on most metrics. One could hope for more leverage but there's a few moving parts in the business. It's unclear from the release how much SSD is contributing to results -- I'll need to hear the call.

Still long.