Intel firm on margin target for year

"Revenue and gross margin guidance is more important than ever with Intel," said Justin McNichols, a portfolio manager at Osborne Partners Capital Management in San Francisco who owns Intel stock.

Full-year gross margin guidance of 57 percent, plus or minus a few points, caught the eyes of many Intel watchers.

"The concern was that the memory business was dragging down the gross margins, which would drag down earnings," said Doug Freedman, an analyst at American Technology Research. "The general consensus was that it would be more like 56 percent."

Intel had set the same margin target in January, then in March scaled back first-quarter margin expectations to 54 percent, plus or minus a point, citing flash memory chip prices. The first-quarter margin ended up being 53.8 percent.

"There was concern we were having a structural breakdown in demand -- that finally the weakness in the economy was starting to hurt PC consumption -- and this argues against that," said Cody Acree, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.

"More important than anything, it’s simply that Intel is not giving an indication that the wheels are coming off."

TECH BELLWETHER

The company, one of the big bellwethers for technology, said it expected second-quarter revenue in a range of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion and a gross margin of 56 percent, give or take a couple points.

Analysts’ current expectations for the second quarter are for a profit of 28 cents per share, on average, on revenue of $9.26 billion, according to Reuters Estimates. The midpoint of Intel’s revenue forecast -- $9.3 billion -- is slightly above consensus estimates.

But no relief is in sight for prices of NAND flash memory chip, which have been under pressure for more than a year now.

"As expected we saw weak pricing," Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said in a phone interview. "We do expect to see continued oversupply throughout the rest of the year. That’s what we have baked into our forecast."

He said Intel’s move to 45-nanometer chipmaking technology was paying off, helping the Santa Clara, California-based company to gain share against cross-county rival AMD.

"We see the core business being strong right now," Smith said. "We delivered exactly what we needed to deliver."

The average selling price for its microprocessors was little changed in the first quarter from the prior quarter, and has been stable in the last three or four quarters, Smith said.

"From an economic standpoint, the two most mature of our markets are not showing any signs of weakness," Chief Executive Paul Otellini said on a conference call, referring to the United States and Europe. "I was just in Europe two weeks ago meeting with customers and I did not pick up anything."

He said the company had a particularly strong first quarter in computer servers with its Xeon processors, and in the notebook market. Strength in microprocessors and chipsets helped offset the weakness in flash memory, he added.

Shares of Intel are down 21 percent this year, compared with a 14 percent decline in the Nasdaq. After gaining 1.1 percent to $20.91 in regular trade, the stock rose to $22.58 after-hours, following the earnings report.

(Editing by Braden Reddall)