A stronger-than expected earnings report on Thursday lifted Intel Corp shares as investors looked past a troubling computer chip flaw weighing on the US tech giant.
Intel shares climbed more than 4 percent to US$47.13 in after-market trades that followed release of its earnings figures, despite its warning of lawsuits, claims and negative publicity from security vulnerabilities, including recently disclosed Spectre and Meltdown flaws.
For the fourth quarter, Intel posted a loss of US$700 million due to about US$5.4 billion being set aside to pay taxes on repatriation of profits from overseas.
Intel reported record revenue of US$17.1 billion in the final three months of last year, and said its annual revenue hit an unprecedented high of US$62.8 billion.
“2017 was a record year for Intel with record fourth-quarter results driven by strong growth of our data-centric businesses,” chief executive Brian Krzanich said.
Intel estimated that revenue this quarter would be about IS$15 billion, and for this year to total about US$65 billion.
Krzanich also said new chips being developed would fix the vulnerabilities disclosed for its current products — flaws which have raised concerns because they are in hardware instead of software.
“We are working to incorporate silicon-based changes to future products that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in hardware,” Krzanich said during a call with analysts.
The products “will start appearing later this year,” he said.
Intel early this week called for a halt in deployment some patches for a troubling vulnerability in its computer chips because they could cause “unpredictable” problems in affected devices.
Intel posted a list of chip models that could be tripped up by the patch, meant to prevent hackers from taking advantage of so-called Meltdown and Spectre flaws to steal data.
“They may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior,” Intel data center group executive vice president Navin Shenoy said in an online post.
Intel and other computing giants are facing inquiries from lawmakers and regulators about the disclosure of the chip flaw.
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