Intel’s Q4 Revenue Outlook Beats Estimates; Shares Rise in After-Hours Trading (INTC)

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker today forecast fourth-quarter revenue above Street estimates. The company also delivered strong third-quarter financial results, pushing shares higher in after-hours trading.

Intel shares rose 3.80% to $24.29 in after-hours trading today. Earlier, the stock had closed 0.52% higher at $23.40 in regular trading.

After market close, Intel said that it expects fourth-quarter revenue to come in between $14.2 billion and $15.2 billion, compared with Street estimates of $14.23 billion. The company’s fourth-quarter revenue forecast has eased concerns that the increasing popularity of tablet computers and a weak global economy are hurting the demand for personal computers.

Although Intel dominates the PC market, the company is yet to gain a strong foothold in the smartphone and tablet PC market.

Meanwhile, for the third quarter of 2011, Intel reported earnings of $0.69 per share, up from $0.52 per share reported for the same period in the previous year. The company’s revenue for the third quarter increased 29% on a year-over-year basis to $14.3 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting the chipmaker to report earnings of $0.61 per share on revenue of $13.87 billion in the third quarter of 2011.

Intel’s third-quarter financial results benefited from corporate IT spending, which has led up well in the last few quarters despite growing economic uncertainty. Robust IT spending boosted sales of the company’s high-margin server chips. Intel also reported solid data center sales for the third quarter. The company reported a 15% increase in data center sales in the third quarter of 2011. However, the company’s Atom mobile chips registered a 32% decline in sales.

Stacy Smith, Chief Financial Officer at Intel, told Reuters that emerging markets are good, enterprise is strong, and the mature market consumer is a little bit weaker. Smith added that Europe has been a little bit weaker than the U.S.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.