Ten Most Undervalued Stocks: Linear Technology

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 13, 12:50PM EST

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Semiconductor stocks are not a Wall St. favorite now. ADI, Texas Instruments and Linear (LLTC) are all off considerably this year. Lehman just downgraded Linear based on their belief that the company’s growth prospects for 2007 are not especially good.

Although Linear showed growth in its last quarter, it projected a sequential quarterly decline in both profits and revenue. That will scare off any investors except those with the stongest stomachs.

Linear’s margins are a thing of beauty. In the last quarter, ending October 1, the company had an operating profit of $163 million on net sales of $292 million.

According to Thomson/First call, the 22 anlysts who cover Linear have an median price target of $36 on a stock that trades just above $32. And, the high target is $45.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.