Intel Corp said on Tuesday its net income in the first quarter nearly quadrupled over last year and reflected an overall bump in spending on technology by companies.
Among other things, Intel got a lift from sales of new chips for computer servers — the kind of purchase that many companies delayed in the recession — and chief financial officer Stacy Smith said in an interview that demand for processors for higher-end laptops was stronger than expected as corporations upgraded their workers’ computers.
That is a change from what Intel saw in the past few quarters, when its growth was driven largely by consumer demand for netbooks, stripped-down laptops used mostly for surfing the Internet. Chips for those machines are less profitable than chips for regular laptops.
Smith also said the company expects to hire about 1,000 people this year worldwide. Intel currently has 79,900 employees, down from 82,500 a year ago.
Intel became the first major technology company to report earnings for the first quarter when it said that it earned US$2.4 billion, or US$0.43 per share, in the period. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting profit of US$0.38 per share.
In the same period last year, Intel earned US$629 million, or US$0.11 per share. At the time Intel was muddling through the recession, but chief executive Paul Otellini predicted that personal computer sales had “bottomed out” — an early forecast that proved true.
Intel’s revenue in the latest period jumped 44 percent to US$10.3 billion, ahead of analysts’ forecast of US$9.8 billion.
The company also raised its forecast for a key performance measurement. Intel now predicts a gross profit margin of 62 percent to 66 percent of revenue this year, up from its previous guidance of 58 percent to 64 percent of revenue.
In related news, ASML Holdings NV, Europe’s biggest maker of semiconductor equipment, posted a first-quarter profit and predicted record full-year revenues as consumers and businesses resumed spending on technology.
Net income was 107 million euros (US$146 million), compared with a net loss of 117 million euros a year earlier, Veldhoven, Netherlands-based ASML said in a statement released yesterday.
That beat the 101 million euros average of 18 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Full-year sales may reach a record level of more than 3.8 billion euros, ASML said.
First-quarter sales rose to 742 million euros from 183.6 million euros a year earlier. Sales had been seen at 714 million euros, an average estimate of 24 analysts showed.
ASML received orders for 50 machines valued at 1 billion euros in the first quarter and expects a similar level of bookings in the second quarter, “confirming the semiconductor industry executing on its upturn cycle,” chief executive Eric Meurice said in the statement.
The company is “on track” for full-year sales above its 2007 peak of 3.8 billion euros, Meurice said.
ASML on Jan. 20 predicted similar bookings for the first quarter as the 956 million euros of the previous three months. The company predicted sales to rise to about 700 million euros in the first quarter and to about 950 million euros in the second quarter.
ASML is the world’s largest maker of machines to project lines on the silicon slices from which chips are made. Its main rival is Nikon Corp of Japan. Applied Materials Inc, based in Santa Clara, California, is the world’s largest maker of semiconductor equipment.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS