Intel stock fell as chip maker cut revenue forecast

Intel stock plunged nearly 7 per cent on slashed revenue forecast for the full year and a flat first-quarter revenue at $16.1 billion.

Its data-centric revenue declined five per cent while PC-centric revenue grew 4 per cent in the first quarter of 2019, the chip-maker said in a statement on Thursday.

Net income was $4 billion -- down from the same quarter last year which reported $4.5 billion.

The company expects full-year revenue of $69 billion, down from the January guidance.

"Results for the first quarter were slightly higher than our January expectations. Looking ahead, we're taking a more cautious view of the year, although we expect market conditions to improve in the second half," said Bob Swan, Intel CEO.

The company said it shipped a strong mix of high-performance products and continued spending discipline while ramping 10nm chip and managing a challenging NAND flash memory pricing environment.

"We aim to capitalize on key technology inflections that set us up to play a larger role in our customers' success, while improving returns for our owners," said Swan.

Intel said last week ita¿s exiting the 5G smartphone market after determining there was "no clear path to profitability".

In the first quarter, the company generated approximately $5 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $1.4 billion and used $2.5 billion to repurchase 49 million shares of stock.

The PC-centric business (CCG) was up in the first quarter due to a strong mix of Intel's higher performance products and strength in gaming, large commercial and modem.

"Intel's first high-volume 10nm processor, code-named Ice Lake, remains on track to be in volume systems on retail shelves for the 2019 holiday selling season," said the company.

Collectively, Intel's data-centric businesses declined 5 per cent (YoY) in the first quarter.

In the Data Center Group (DCG), the cloud segment grew 5 per cent while the communications service provider segment declined 4 per cent and enterprise and government revenue declined 21 per cent.

--IANS

na/ksk