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Strategies & Market Trends : Sharck Soup -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frederick Langford who wrote (16629)	4/17/2001 5:27:25 PM
From: Softechie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37746

Intel first quarter net plunges 82 percent (UPDATE: Recasts, adds details, previous SANTA CLARA, Calif.) By Duncan Martell SAN FRANCISCO, April 17 (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) on Tuesday reported a steep drop in first-quarter net income, but the results were slightly better than expected and the world's No. 1 chip maker offered upbeat comments about the second half, sending its shares higher. Intel said net income fell 82 percent to $485 million, or 7 cents per diluted share, in the quarter ended March 31, from $2.7 billion, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier, due to weak demand and slowing economic growth. The company, based in Santa Clara, California, said sales in the quarter fell 16 percent to $6.68 billion from $7.99 billion. Despite a slowing U.S. economy, weakness in other parts of the globe and waning spending on information technology, Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett said he believes its microprocessor business -- 80 percent of the company's sales -- has stabilized. And Chief Financial Officer Andy Bryant told Reuters in an interview that he saw ``some good signs toward the end of the quarter.'' Intel's shares rose to $28.93 in after-hours trading from $26.04 at the end of the regular session on Nasdaq. ``The numbers themselves tell a pretty grim story so if you're going to hang your hat on this, you have to believe the qualitative commentary rather than the quantitative information,'' said SG Cowen & Co. semiconductor analyst Drew Peck. ``A lot is going to hinge on how much credibility there is in the comments made by Barrett that the microprocessor business has stabilized,'' Peck said. Excluding acquisition-related charges, net income fell to $1.1 billion, or 16 cents a share, for the quarter ended March 31 from $3.04 billion, or 43 cents, in the year-earlier quarter. Analysts polled by research firm Thomson Financial/First Call had estimated earnings before acquisition-related items ranging from 14 cents to 15 cents a share, with an average forecast of 15 cents. The sales forecast for Intel was $6.59 billion. ``In our microprocessor business, given what we saw happening in March gives us a lot more comfort that we'll have a pretty normal second quarter and a seasonally strong second half of the year,'' Bryant told Reuters in an interview. ``The first quarter was difficult at best,'' Bryant said. ``In March we saw a return to the time when customers started ordering new product again.'' Since the end of last year, the stock has underperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 Index by about 4 percent and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index by about 15 percent.