Intel soars after beating big on earnings
- Intel shares are up after the company reported a big top and bottom line beat for the fourth quarter.
- It was the first earnings report since the Spectre and Meltdown flaws were reported.
- Watch the company trade in real time here.
Intel shares are rising after the company's earnings report, despite uncertainty around the recently disclosed Spectre and Meltdown security flaws.
The company is trading up 6.78% to $48.37 after reporting a top and bottom line beat for the fourth quarter. Intel reported adjusted earnings of $1.08 per share vs Wall Street estimates of $0.87 per share, and revenue of $17.1 billion vs. analysts' estimates of $16.34 billion.
The results were the first for the company after the disclosure of major security flaws known as Spectre and Meltdown. The flaws have rocked the tech world since Google engineers wrote a detailed description of the flaws on January 3. The vulnerabilities affect every major CPU maker, but Intel has taken the brunt of the impact as its chips are affected more than others.
The flaws are especially worrisome because they were built into Intel's hardware, making fixes to existing chips more challenging, but the company said it would begin shipping chips without the flaws later this year.
"We've been working around clock," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said. "We're acutely aware we have more to do."
Intel did not detail the potential financial impacts of the flaws in its report, but analysts weren't really expecting the company to.
"While Meltdown/Spectre could cause purchases to be postponed in 1H, it still too early to tell, and we doubt INTC will guide to such an event for fear of driving a self-fulfilling prophecy," John Pitzer, an analyst at Credit Suisse, said before the report.
After earnings, Pitzer upgraded his view of the stock from a "neutral" to "outperform," and raised his price target from $42 to $55.
"While Intel has modestly underperformed the [semiconductor sector] since 03/17, absolute stock performance has been strong and our valuation concern has not "played out" and is unlikely to," Pitzer said.
Intel is now trading in positive territory for the year, up 1.25%.
