Silicon Motion Technology Corporation (NASDAQ: SIMO) has had two major developments since the beginning of 2013. They have announced a conference call on February 4 ^th to announce their fourth quarter earnings of 2012. The announcement regarding the conference call was made on 15 ^th January. On 22 ^nd January, the company announced that a new share repurchase program has been authorized by their board of directors, and that their first quarterly cash dividend has also been approved.

Silicon Motion specializes in “designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices as well as specialty RF IC solutions”. The company is a global leader in mobile communications as well as mobile storage. Their products are used by major smartphone and tablet manufacturers, and support the latest technology. At the end of the year 2011, the company had cash, cash equivalents, and short-term securities worth 91.7 million dollars. At the end of 2012, the same assets grew to 169.6 million dollars.

At the time this article is being written, the company stock value is 15.83 dollars, and the consensus recommendation on NASDAQ is to buy the company shares. Although the earnings per share (EPS) will be announced at the conference call, it is being predicted that the EPS for the fourth quarter of 2012 will be $0.31, as opposed to $0.37 in the fourth quarter of 2011. However, those are rough estimates and the real EPS will be announced on 4 ^th February.

The conference call will be webcasted on the company’s official website, and will be made available to individual investors through www.earnings.com, and to institutional investors through password protected access at www.streetevents.com.

As far as the announcement about the new share repurchase program is concerned, the company has been working on this strategy for the past few years. SIMO’s first stock repurchase program was approved in 2008, and the company has bought back and retired 6.2 million ADSs (American Depositary Shares) worth $54.3 million since then. This new program will allow them to repurchase $40 million worth of ADSs in 2013. The first quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per ADS will be paid on 4 ^th March to all shareholders that are in the records by 21 ^st February.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation has competitors such as PLX Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: PLXT) and Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), and even competes with the likes of NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) and AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) in some product lines.

With a stable stock price and growing assets, Silicon Motion is a safe bet. The emerging growth company has held its own in a fiercely competitive market, and could prove to be a wise choice for people looking to make long term investments. We will get back to this story after the conference call on 4 ^th February, for now, the stock prices are rising and things are looking up for Silicon Motion Technology Corporation.

What is your opinion on SIMO? Would you invest in the company or will you wait to see if the stock prices are stable in the next few months? What is your opinion on their repurchase program? We would love to hear your opinions in the comments section.