One of the top Dow performers of 2014 continues to produce good numbers on earnings. Giant chip-maker Intel (INTC) posted a robust 74 cents per share in its fiscal Q4 after the market close on Thursday, beating the Zacks consensus estimate of 66 cents. Revenues were more or less in-line: $14.72 billion compared with $14.71 billion expected.
Intel's PC business in the holiday quarter brought in $8.9 billion in sales, which was a tad light of estimates. But Intel's Data Center business delivered $4.1 billion, which was better than expected. Intel also produced better-than-expected gross margins of 64 percent, above the consensus estimate of 62 percent.
This marks the fourth consecutive quarter Intel has beaten its earnings estimate, but Q4's 12 percent positive surprise is considerably better than the average 2 percent beat over the previous four quarters. Analysts had also been busy upgrading estimates, especially for FY15 and FY16.
Though shares of Intel have gone up north of 40 percent in the past year, its price-to-earnings multiple remains at a very reasonable 17x. This is especially for a company seemingly having no problem sustaining gross margin numbers 60+ percent. Intel has for several quarters now managed to distance itself from its prime competitors IBM (IBM) and Cisco (CSCO).
Intel is still losing money on its Mobile and Communications business, however — to the tune of $1.1 billion in Q4. Mobile is also down 85 percent from 2013 for the company, something that will likely be addressed in Intel's conference call.
All in all, nothing to sneeze at: both Intel's $55.9 billion in fiscal 2014 year revenue and its $14.72 billion are record highs for the company. Intel currently rates a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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