Second quarter earnings season has gotten well underway for our portfolio holdings and, so far at least, there haven’t been any notable misses. Instead, most of our holdings seem to be either beating estimates or have enough other good news to offset any earnings dips.

Xilinx (NSDQ: XLNX), our play on artificial intelligence, racked up a solid fiscal first quarter which soundly beat analyst’s estimates.

Revenue rose 4.7% year-over-year to $575 million despite worries that slower demand from Europe and Asia-Pacific impact sales. In fact, demand from Asia-Pacific jumped 16% compared to the prior year while European demand for chips rose 5%.

Most of that demand was for the company’s advanced products, like the programmable chips used in AI applications. Sales of 28-nanometer and 20-nanometer chips were particularly strong, with its revamped 16-nanometer chips masking a positive contribution. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter and is used to measure the space between a chip’s transistor components. The smaller the space, the more powerful the chip.

That growth helped to drive an almost 11% jump in earnings, up from $147.7 million a year ago to $163 million. That comes out to 61 cents per share and well outpaced the consensus estimate of 55 cents. In an impressive show of financial strength, not only did it pay $83.6 million in dividends and repurchase $100.2 million worth of shares, it added $180 million worth of cash to its balance sheet.

While a dip in Asian or European sales could ultimately prove a headwind, management said it believes that its fiscal second quarter revenue should be essentially flat compare to the first. It believes that its cost control plans should yield results though, helping to drive further earnings growth along with higher demand for its advanced chips.

Continue buying Xilinx up to $53.

Silicon Laboratories (NSDQ: SLAB) also reported a much better than expected second quarter as both revenue and earnings posted solid growth.

Revenue rose from $164.9 million in the year-ago quarter to $174.9 million, a 6.1% increase which beat expectations by more than $4 million. Sales in its Internet of Things (IoT) segment hit $76.7 million, up 8.3% compared to the first quarter, helped along by the introduction of several new products, including a new groundbreaking low-energy chip that allows easier communication for IoT applications. Sales in its infrastructure segment, which primarily serves datacenters, also hit a new record, rising 12.9% sequentially to $35.7 million.

Those gains helped pushed its quarterly adjusted earnings up from 17 cents a year ago to 37 cents. Management expects third quarter revenue to hold relatively steady, coming in between $171 million to $176 million, with EPS falling between $0.27 to $0.33.

While management’s guidance wasn’t much more detailed than that, since GSA (general, selling and administrative) expenses have been falling, they seem to be expecting higher research and development costs. That bodes well for earnings down the road, with new product launches – particularly in IoT – generally driving a big portion of earnings gains.

Continue buying Silicon Laboratories under $55.

Silicon Laboratories and Xilinx have both gained about 5% following their earnings reports, but they’re not our biggest winner so far. That honor goes to EKSO Bionics (OTC: EKSO) which has gained nearly 9% since it announced earnings, giving it a nearly 60% gain over the trailing month.

While quarterly revenue appeared to fall from $2.1 million in the same period last year to $1.6 million, that was mostly due to an accounting quirk related to deferred revenue that was recognized in the second quarter of last year. Medical device revenue was actually up by $500,000 year-over-year.

Revenue was down in the engineering service segment, coming in at just $100,000 compared to $1.1 million in the prior year. That was a conscious choice on the company’s part though, as it shifted its engineers away from service roles and devoted them to its internal development programs.

Despite better than expected revenue growth, the company’s quarterly loss widened from 39 cents last year to 61 cents in the quarter. That was mostly thanks to a sharp jump in costs, both in research and development efforts and compensation. There was also a preferred dividend issued in the quarter related to a financing deal struck back in December, though it was actually a noncash item.

Despite the wider loss, the biggest drivers of Ekso’s gains are the news that its Ekso GT has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for use by patients who have lost use of one side of their body’s due to stroke, making it the only exoskeleton approved for such use. The company has also been approved as a vendor to Healthsouth (NYSE: HLS), the largest network of inpatient rehabilitative hospitals and home-health services in the US. Those two developments will give Ekso access to much larger patient base, potentially boosting sales in the months and years to come.

Esko Bionics is an increasingly attractive buy under $9.