(Bloomberg) — Intel Corp. gave an upbeat forecast for the current quarter on continued demand for personal computers that enable working and studying from home.
The results, released before the market closed on Thursday, sent the shares higher in New York. The stock then dipped slightly in extended trading.
Revenue in the period ending in March will be about $17.5 billion, the Santa Clara, California-based company said. This excludes the memory chip division Intel is selling. Analysts were looking for $16.2 billion on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Intel sees strong demand for laptops through the first half of the year, Chief Financial Officer George Davis said in an interview. Earnings in the second part of the year will partly depend on whether corporations increase spending on new hardware, he added.
“The question is will we see support from enterprise,” he said. “They’ve been very quiet.”
The world’s largest chipmaker shared no new details about its manufacturing plans in its earnings statement on Thursday. The company will address this during a conference call with analysts later on Thursday. Investors have been waiting to see if Intel will outsource more production.
Intel recently decided to replace Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan with Pat Gelsinger, a former insider who left in 2009 after decades at the company. It made the change after falling behind in manufacturing, a lapse that’s offering rivals the chance to make better chips for the first time in more than a decade.
Read more: Intel Goes Back to Roots With Gelsinger to Regain Chip LeadSwan was due to announce a plan on Thursday to outsource more manufacturing to other companies or try to reclaim Intel’s leadership in production technology. Gelsinger takes over officially on Feb. 15 and he is taking more time to devise his own strategy.“Longer term, it goes beyond the make-vs.-buy decision,” Ambrish Srivastava, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note published before Intel earnings. ‘’What we are looking for is how Intel addresses what appear to be recurring issues it has had on that front. For that, we will likely have to wait to hear from the new CEO.”
Intel’s stock rose 6.5% to close at $62.46 in New York. The shares declined 17% in 2020 but have rebounded following Gelsinger’s appointment.
While Intel is currently benefiting from strong PC demand, Gelsinger is taking the reins of a company in the midst of its worst crisis in at least a decade. It has been the largest chipmaker for most of the past 30 years dominating the $400 billion industry by making the best designs in its own cutting-edge factories. Most other U.S. chip companies shut or sold plants and tapped other firms to make the components. Intel held out, arguing that doing both improved each side of its operations and created better semiconductors.
That strategy has crumbled in recent years as Intel struggled to introduce new production techniques on time. It is now lagging behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co., which make chips for Intel’s competitors. Intel has had talks with both Asian companies about producing some of its leading products, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.
Intel’s personal computer chip division had revenue of $10.9 billion in the fourth quarter. Analysts expected $9.72 billion. Its higher-margin data center unit generated sales of $6.1 billion. Wall Street was looking for $5.37 billion.
In Intel’s data center business, revenue from cloud service providers fell 15% from a year earlier. Enterprise and government sales slumped 25%. Volumes and average selling prices declined. Owners of large data centers are working their way through unused stockpiles of chips.
In its PC business, Intel reported a 30% surge in laptop chip sales, even as average selling prices declined 15%.
Fourth-quarter profit, excluding some items, was $1.52 a share on $20 billion of revenue, down 1% from a year earlier. Analysts had estimated $1.11 a share on revenue of $17.5 billion.
Intel’s gross margin, the percentage of revenue remaining after deducting the cost of production, was 56.8%. This is a key indicator of the strength of its manufacturing and product pricing. Intel has historically delivered margins of about 60%.
(Updates with CFO comments in fourth paragraph.)
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