Intel Pleases With Profit, Revenue Growth

Intel has pleased Wall Street after it reported a positive financials for its third quarter, in stark contrast to the disappointing results from Google and Amazon.

Intel saw a significant rise in both profits and revenues, helped by stong demand for its PC processors, and its high-margin data centre business.

This is despite problems including the recently uncovered Foreshadow flaw with some Intel chips, on top of the Meltdown and Spectre flaws, as well as yet another delay of the release of its next-generation Cannon Lake chips.

Strong performance

For the third quarter ending 30 September, Intel posted a 42 percent rise in profits to $6.4bn from $4.5bn in the same year-ago quarter.

Revenues also rose 19 percent to $19.2bn from $16.1bn a year earlier.

“Stronger than expected customer demand across our PC and data-centric businesses continued in the third quarter,” said Bob Swan, Intel CFO and Interim CEO.

In June chief executive Brian Krzanich had left the chip giant after a consensual relationship with an employee became public.

“This drove record revenue and another raise to our full-year outlook, which is now up more than six billion dollars from our January expectations,” said Swan. “We are thrilled that in a highly competitive market, customers continue to choose Intel.”

And he offered up a positive outlook for the fourth quarter.

Positive outlook

“In the fourth quarter, we remain focused on the challenge of supplying the incredible market demand for Intel products to support our customers’ growth,” he said. “We expect 2018 will be another record year for Intel, and our transformation positions us to win share in an expanded $300 billion total addressable market.”

Intel said that its Client Computing Group (CCG), the Data Center Group (DCG), the Internet of Things Group (IOTG), the Non-volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG) and Mobileye all achieved record revenue.

Data centre sales are an increasingly important element for Intel, as they are more profitable that sales of processors for the PC market, and this business grew 22 percent in the quarter, led by 26 percent YoY growth in DCG.

PC-centric revenue meanwhile was up 16 percent on continued strength in the commercial and gaming segments.

The results are welcome news for the tech industry after stock markets were shaken this week after both Amazon and Alphabet reported disappointing earnings.

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