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Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc Stock Upgraded (KLIC)

By TheStreet Wire 05/03/12 - 05:00 AM EDT

Find out if (KLIC) is in Cramer's Portfolio.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Kulicke & Soffa Industries (Nasdaq:KLIC) has been upgraded by TheStreet Ratings from hold to buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, attractive valuation levels and expanding profit margins. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had somewhat weak growth in earnings per share.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

Compared to its closing price of one year ago, KLIC's share price has jumped by 43.37%, exceeding the performance of the broader market during that same time frame. Regarding the stock's future course, although almost any stock can fall in a broad market decline, KLIC should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed a very nice gain in the past year.
KLIC's debt-to-equity ratio is very low at 0.22 and is currently below that of the industry average, implying that there has been very successful management of debt levels. Along with this, the company maintains a quick ratio of 2.72, which clearly demonstrates the ability to cover short-term cash needs.
46.90% is the gross profit margin for KULICKE & SOFFA INDUSTRIES which we consider to be strong. Regardless of KLIC's high profit margin, it has managed to decrease from the same period last year. Despite the mixed results of the gross profit margin, the net profit margin of 11.40% trails the industry average.
The revenue fell significantly faster than the industry average of 19.3%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues fell by 29.2%. Weakness in the company's revenue seems to have hurt the bottom line, decreasing earnings per share.

Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells capital equipment and expendable tools to assemble semiconductor devices, including integrated circuits, powered discrete devices, light-emitting diodes, and power modules. The company has a P/E ratio of eight, equal to the average electronics industry P/E ratio and below the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7. Kulicke & Soffa has a market cap of $965.8 million and is part of the technology sector and electronics industry. Shares are up 40.4% year to date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.

You can view the full Kulicke & Soffa Ratings Report or get investment ideas from our investment research center.
-- Written by a member of TheStreet RatingsStaff

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