14 DAY TRIAL // The economic recession has been making life hard to all levels and all segments of the industry and 2009 was quite a difficult year for all IT corporations, especially in the first half. While this would have explained financial losses for companies, the Santa Clara chip maker Intel seems to have bounced back instead of suffering any losses. Despite the various legal issues and the general slowness of 2009, Intel reported a substantial increase in its revenues, especially its fourth quarter net income compared to 2008.
Of course, the especially weak marketing performance of Q4 2008 was one of the main elements behind the year-on-year income increase. Nevertheless, the chip giant reported a surge of no less than 875% in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the same period of the previous year. This led to Intel's shares being worth 40 cents each and its total revenues rising to $10.6 billion, which translates into a 28% improvement over 2008. Analysts had only estimated 30 cents a share on revenue of $10.2 billion.
According to researcher Gartner, in Q4 2009, global PC shipments rose 22.1% compared to the same period in 2008. This was mostly owed to the high number of low-cost PCs bought by consumers and the general minimum corporate spending as a result of companies holding off on replacing older systems. Intel's fourth quarter revenues for the PC Client and Data Center markets were reported to have increased by 10% and 21% respectively.
Intel also expects a revenue of $9.7 billion for the first quarter of the ongoing year, plus or minus $400 million. In addition, the company expects the total 2010 gross margin to reach 61%, plus or minus 3 percentage points, whereas the gross margin for the first quarter is forecasted at 61%, plus or minus 2.
"We're building into our model a modest recovery of corporate purchases of PCs," said President and Chief Executive of Intel, Paul Otellini. "We're not programming into our guidance or estimates any kind of overnight recovery of the corporate market."