Audience (the Company) Deserves a Standing Ovation

Audience still has some prominent customers including Google (GOOG) and Samsung. So it's not as if Audience was left without a "program." The company still had a revenue plan.

Although Audience has recovered quicker and much better than expected, Apple was still responsible for 40% of the company's overall revenue, making the loss of Apple as a customer significant.

Apple still provides 33% of Audience's revenue, and Audience management expects that percentage to continue to decline as Apple rolls out new products that won't include Audience's technology.

However, this brings up an interesting question. With Apple's reputation for having a strong emphasis and focus on the user experience, what does it say about Audience's technology that Apple feels it can do without it?

Although Qualcomm (QCOM), which has a great relationship with Apple, has its own noise-canceling technology, it's not nearly as advanced as what Audience offers. Plus, it's merely software-based.

For that matter, as component suppliers are concerned, Audience is beginning to gain ground on not only Qualcomm, but also popular chipmakers such as Texas Instruments (TXN).

Bottom Line

Although I'm not ready to proclaim that Audience investors should settle into their seats and get comfortable, the company's management deserves a standing ovation for having steered this ship as well as it has.

Going forward, Audience will need to figure out how to secure more business and convince new and existing customers why its technology belongs in their hardware. To the extent that it can do this well, the stock should work in the long term. A couple of more quarters like this and shares could reach $20 in the second half of the year.

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At the time of publication, the author was long AAPL.

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This article was written by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.

Richard Saintvilus is a private investor with an information technology and engineering background and has been investing and trading for over 15 years. He employs conservative strategies in assessing equities and appraising value while minimizing downside risk. His decisions are based in part on management, growth prospects, return on equity and price-to-earnings as well as macroeconomic factors. He is an investor who seeks opportunities whether on the long or short side and believes in changing positions as information changes.

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