SiliconBeat

Perhaps good things do come to those who wait.  Take Kit Tsui, vice president of planning and administration at Milpitas-based Sigma Designs, who’s worked there since 1982.  Before selling 30,000 shares in July, Tsui had not sold any company shares since at least 1998.

On Sept. 4 Tsui exercised options to buy 52,249 Sigma shares for $194,065, paying an
average of $3.71 each, and sold 27,250 of them for $1,181,193, or an average of $43.35 each, leaving her with $987,128Š and 24,999 shares to sell later.

Perhaps good things also do come to those who wait. Take Kit Tsui, vice
president of planning and administration at Milpitas-based Sigma Designs, who’s worked there since 1982. Before selling 30,000 shares in July, Tsui had not sold any company shares since at least 1998.

On Sept. 4 Tsui exercised options to buy 52,249 Sigma shares for $194,065, paying an
average of $3.71 each, and sold 27,250 of them for $1,181,193, or an average of $43.35 each, leaving her with $987,128Š and 24,999 shares to sell later.

Times are good at Sigma Designs, which specializes in chip systems used in video and audio devices. Sales in fiscal year 2007 hit $91.2 million, up 174 percent from the year before and a record. (The previous record of $76.2 million was set in 1990.) Net profit rose to $6.2 million compared with a $1.6 million loss the year before.

On Aug. 29, the company reported that sales for the first two quarters of fiscal 2008 were $78.6 million, up 125 percent from the same period the year before, while profit hit $14 million for the period, compared with a loss of $1.1 million for the half year before. The results sent Sigma’s shares up 11 percent the next day to $42.70.

So far this calendar year, insiders have have sold 772,000 shares of Sigma worth about $23.6 million at an average price of $30.54. They have exercised options to buy 831,000 shares, or about a quarter of the 3.2 million shares that were exercisable by all employees at the end of fiscal 2007, at an average strike price of $3.53.

Sigma’s shares ended today at at an all-time closing high of $44.02.