Why Synnex Corporation Shares Sank

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of Synnex Corporation plunged more than 11% Friday after the business process services company turned in solid fiscal fourth-quarter results, but followed up with disappointing forward earnings guidance.

So what: Quarterly revenue rose 10.6% year over year to $3.059 billion, which translated to non-GAAP net income of $1.20 per diluted share. By contrast, analysts were looking for adjusted earnings of just $1.18 per share on sales of $2.98 billion.

However, Synnex also stated fiscal first quarter 2014 revenue is expected to be in the range of $2.675 billion to $2.775 billion -- for a midpoint of $2.725 billion -- with diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.91 to $0.95. Analysts, on average, were modeling significantly higher earnings of $1.03 per share on sales of $2.7 billion.

Now what: The top-line miss isn't terrible, but it's worth noting that the already-weak earnings per share guidance doesn't include any one-time charges stemming from Synnex's pending $505 million acquisition of IBM's customer-care services unit.

Even after today's drop, the stock doesn't look particularly compelling to me, at around 18.5 times last year's earnings. However, management did elaborate during the subsequent conference call that they're optimistic growth in IT demand in the U.S. and Japan will continue, and that IT demand in Canada should "slowly improve." What's more, they say, Synnex has "ample opportunity" to improve both gross and operating margins for a nice boost to the company's bottom line down the road.

That's why, at the very least, I think investors would be wise to add Synnex stock to their watchlists.