{"id":10135,"date":"2012-04-18T07:32:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T05:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=10135"},"modified":"2012-04-18T12:52:56","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T10:52:56","slug":"intel-forecasts-above-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/hardware\/10135\/intel-forecasts-above-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"Intel forecasts above expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top chipmaker Intel Corp<\/a> forecast revenue above expectations, as demand for personal computers remained resilient in the face of consumers’ growing preference for tablets and other mobile gadgets.<\/p>\n

But investors, accustomed to Intel’s beating forecasts, sold the company’s stock, which had rallied 17 percent this year, following the news.<\/p>\n

Shaky economies in Europe and the United States, a growing consumer preference for tablets, and a recent shortage of hard drives due to flooding in Thailand have taken a toll on the PC industry.<\/p>\n

Still, demand in China and other emerging economies has helped sustain PC growth, and Intel’s server business has been a winner from the buildout of servers behind the Internet and data consumed on smartphones.<\/p>\n

“Given the topline is slightly better than expected, it doesn’t seem like there’s a meaningful impact from tablets right now. The PC market is holding up pretty well,” said Srini Pajjuri, an analyst at CLSA.<\/p>\n

Despite weakness in the United States, global PC shipments in the first quarter grew 1.9 percent from the year-ago period, research firm Gartner<\/a> said last week. That was better than the firm’s previous forecast of a 1.2 percent decline.<\/p>\n

Hoping to safeguard its position in PCs, Intel is heavily promoting a new class of instant-on, super-thin laptops dubbed “ultrabooks” that it hopes can stand up to the likes of Apple<\/a> Inc’s Macbook Air, with some of the technological chic the iPad and other tablets epitomize.<\/p>\n

An upcoming launch of Intel’s newest PC processor, called Ivy Bridge, is expected to boost the company’s sales later this year, as is the launch of Microsoft Corp’s<\/a> Windows<\/a> 8 operating system later in 2012.<\/p>\n

Intel has struggled to find a foothold in smartphones and tablets, where processors based on ARM Holdings’ power-efficient chip designs are widely used.<\/p>\n

But Intel has recently shown some encouraging signs with announcements that its newest processors would be used in a handful of upcoming smartphones.<\/p>\n

Many investors are waiting to see how successful the new handsets become with consumers before declaring the chipmaker a serious player in the mobile market. But growing expectations that Intel will be able to compete in mobile have fueled some of the gain in its shares in recent months.<\/p>\n

The long-time technology bellwether said revenue in the current quarter would be $13.6 billion, plus or minus $500 million. Analysts on average had expected $13.45 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I\/B\/E\/S.<\/p>\n

Ahead of Intel’s earnings report, some analysts said they were optimistic the company would beat their own estimates.<\/p>\n

Upcoming chips<\/strong><\/p>\n

Intel’s stock trades at 11 times earnings, after a 17 percent gain so far this year.<\/p>\n

The long-awaited Windows 8 is expected to cause a jump in PC sales, but the operating system will be Microsoft’s first version of Windows that is compatible with chips designed by ARM Holdings<\/a>, a rival of Intel.<\/p>\n

Intel could face new competition in low-end PCs from companies like Nvidia Corp<\/a> and Qualcomm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The world’s leading chipmaker said revenue in the first quarter was $12.9 billion, up from $12.85 billion in the year-ago period and a bit higher than the $12.85 billion expected.<\/p>\n

GAAP net income in the first quarter was $2.74 billion, down from $3.16 billion in the year-ago period.<\/p>\n

GAAP earnings per share were 53 cents, better than the 50 cents expected.<\/p>\n

Intel said non-GAAP gross margins in the second quarter would be 63 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points.<\/p>\n

Despite the relatively upbeat outlook, shares of Intel fell 2.81 percent in extended trade after closing up 0.23 percent at $28.47 on Nasdaq<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Top chipmaker Intel Corp forecast revenue above expectations, as demand for personal computers remained resilient in the face of consumers’ growing preference for tablets and other mobile gadgets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[25,467,305,169,1061,523,2132],"class_list":["post-10135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-active","tag-chips","tag-intel","tag-microsoft","tag-nvidia","tag-qualcomm","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10135"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10204,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10135\/revisions\/10204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}