Why ON Semiconductor Corp. Shares Popped

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 thesis.

What: Shares of ON Semiconductor Corp. rose more than 10% during Friday's intraday trading after the company announced better-than-expected fourth-quarter results.

So what: Quarterly revenue came in at $718 million, which translated to adjusted net income of $0.17 per diluted share. Analysts, on average, were looking for earnings of just $0.14 per share on sales of $691.29 million.

In addition, ON anticipates current quarter revenue of $695 million to $725 million, which is also well above expectations for Q1 sales of only $676.09 million.

Now what: CEO Keith Jackson weighed in: "Business trends during the fourth quarter of 2013 improved significantly with heightened order activity, and the strength has continued thus far in the current quarter. With an improving macro-economic outlook, especially for developed economies, and with favorable supply demand dynamics, we are upbeat on our outlook for 2014."

Even after today's pop, shares are currently only trading for around 10.6 times next year's estimated earnings. Keeping in mind those estimates are likely to increase as analysts have time to fully digest the news, I think ON Semiconductor stock should still be able to reward patient shareholders going forward.