Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) released their Q4 2019 earnings after the market close today, significantly beating analyst expectations.
The chip manufacturing giant reported revenues of $20.2 billion in the final quarter of last year, beating consensus estimates of $19.23 billion by 5%.
Sales in the PC side of the business, which accounted for almost 50% of overall revenues, bounced back by growing 2% over the same quarter last year after being down 5% year over year in Q3. With reports of rival AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) beginning to win over the lucrative PC gaming market, Intel may face headwinds in this segment without new product innovation.
On the data-centric segment of Intel’s revenues, the Data Centre group saw revenues rise 19% compared to the same quarter last year and IoT (Internet of Things) revenues were also up, with 13% year-over-year performance. In particular the Mobileye segment showed healthy growth of 31% compared to last year.
Intel continued its push into growth segments within its data-centric business in Q4 with its $2 billion acquisition of AI chipmaker Habana Labs. At the time of the acquisition Intel expected more than $3.5 billion in ‘AI-driven revenue’ in 2020 which would be a year-over-year growth of 20%.
On the bottom line the chipmaker reported earnings per share of $1.58 for the quarter which were much higher than the $1.25 expected by analysts.
Intel’s 2020 Guidance Surprises Compared to Expectations
Intel also provided guidance on their 2020 financial performance, reporting expected revenues of $73.5 billion and EPS of $4.71 for the full year. Compared to Wall Street analyst expectations for the company, these numbers were surprising.
Consensus estimates for the chipmaker were $72.15 billion in sales and $4.65 earnings per share for Intel over 2020, 2% and 1% lower than the company’s guidance.
Intel’s stock enjoyed had a decent 2019, returning 30.7% over the full year, which while healthy was far behind their peers like AMD which saw its stock go up by nearly 150% in 2019. So far in 2020 Intel’s stock is up over 6% and thanks to the 2020 guidance was trading up 7% in after market trading immediately after releasing earnings at the time of publishing.
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