Under Media Radar, Diodes Achieves Impressive Growth.

SEMICONDUCTOR manufacturer Diodes Inc. could be called a stealth success.

The Westlake Village-based company reported record earnings and revenues last week, and over the past year has seen its stock price triple amid otherwise turbulent market conditions -- but Diodes has received relatively little media attention and only one analyst covers the growing company.

For the second quarter ended June 30, net income rose 424 percent to $4.3 million (46 cents per diluted share), compared to net income of $825,000 (10 cents) for the year-earlier quarter.

That handily beat an estimate of 38 cents per share.

"We're all very pleased," said Carl Wertz, chief financial officer at Diodes. "We have exceeded our projected plans, even as of three months ago."

Diodes provides high-quality discrete semiconductors primarily to the automotive, computing, electronic and telecommunications industries. Three years ago, the company was only distributing these devices, but Diodes now manufactures 60 percent of the semiconductors it distributes.

"The market for these devices is growing very rapidly," said Joe Blankenship, the only analyst covering the company and vice president of research at Phoenix-based investment bank Peacock, Hislop, Staley, & Given. "Industry growth is up, but the use of these discrete semiconductors is accelerating even faster than the industry growth."

Semiconductors can be memory or processor chips, and discrete semiconductors conduct the electricity needed by those other kinds of chips -- so any kind of semiconductor requires numerous discrete semiconductors to function.

"The more complex the logic device or microprocessor, the more discrete devices they will need," Blankenship explained. "The next generation of cell phone uses 1,200 discrete semiconductors, compared to 600 in a current design."

The rapid growth in consumer electronics and computer devices has brought stock market success to Diodes, which employs about 650 people.

At the height of the dot-com fever, Diodes was cold as ice, at a split-adjusted price of $3.83 per share as of Oct. 13, 1999. When the market began turning on dot-coms, Diodes' stock began catching on. Then the company moved from the American Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq, and approved a 3-for-2 stock split.

The company's stock price hit a 52-week high of $34.29 a share on June 26. But more recently it has fallen out of favor, apparently caught in the general downdraft affecting semiconductor makers. One key report predicted the market will suffer a downturn in the second half of the year.

Despite Diodes' impressive earnings, its stock closed at $20.75 a share on July 27, the day of the announcement, a slight decrease from the day before. Nonetheless, Blankenship has a 12-month target stock price of $36.

"The sentiment on the overall chip market is basically carrying the day," he said. "The results were 8 cents above my estimate and I continue to see growth going forward, but right now nobody is willing to bet too much on semiconductor stocks overall. You can't look at it as a reflection of the company."

Diodes has succeeded despite a few tumultuous years, during which about 37 percent of the company's stock was bought up by a Taiwan tech firm.

At the beginning of this year, new majority owner Lite-On Power Semiconductor Corp. of Taipei brought in as Diodes' president and CEO C.H. Chen, who 10 years ago founded a Lite-On subsidiary that is now a major player in making scanner optics for copy and fax machines.

"He's proven himself there," Wertz said. "There's a good chance he could do the same with Diodes."

Blankenship agreed. "That in itself has created a redirection, more of an emphasis on growth," he said.

Growth has been bolstered by an expanding manufacturing plant based in China. By the end of the year, the company will have poured a total of about $40 million into building and expanding its Shanghai facility.

"The China expansion is very significant in terms of meeting the need for high-quality, very-small-footprint transistors and diodes," Blankenship said.

In addition to growing the manufacturing business at the China plant, Chen's plan includes adding to the company's distribution and manufacturing components.

"The focus under him is looking for a design capability and seeking other acquisitions to complement our business," Wertz said. "We nailed distributing, now we have manufacturing, but we don't have internal design."