Chip giant Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) plans to report its financial results for the second quarter of 2017 and provide financial guidance for the third quarter of 2017 on Thursday, July 27. The stock has been a poor performer year-to-date, with the shares down 4.25% in that period as chip stocks have broadly rallied over that time (the iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX) is up about 22% year-to-date). Let's go over the key expectations for Intel ahead of the quarter. What Intel said it would deliverLast quarter, Intel guided to revenue of $14.4 billion for the quarter, gross profit margin percentage of 62%, and operating income of $3.6 billion. On a non-GAAP basis (I'm using non-GAAP since this is what the analyst community tends to use), Intel expects earnings-per-share of $0.68 for the quarter. I don't expect Intel to deviate too much from that guidance; if the company dramatically missed or exceeded these numbers, it would likely have pre-announced its results for the quarter a while back. The financial analyst community seems to be expecting Intel to deliver on what it guided without too much surprise; the average analyst revenue estimate for the quarter is $14.41 billion, with the average earnings per share estimate at $0.68 -- pretty much Intel's guidance. What analysts expect Intel to deliverI don't think the results for the current quarter will drive the stock price much either way; the company's financial outlook for the third quarter, on the other hand, could be the key to any move in the stock price. The average revenue estimate for the quarter is $15.32 billion and the average earnings-per-share estimate for the quarter is $0.74. It's worth noting that these figures both represent year-over-year declines from $15.78 billion and $0.80 per share, respectively (2.92% and 7.5% if you want those declines in percentage terms). The main driver of the year-over-year declines is likely the fact that Intel Security will be excluded from the financials in the third quarter of this year, but they were present in the same quarter a year ago. Other things to listen toThough in the near-term, I suspect that any big move in the stock price (if there is one) will be driven by whether Intel's fourth quarter guidance misses, meets, or beats expectations, there are several longer-term questions that I'm hoping that Intel will answer on the call (either in the prepared remarks or during the question and answer session). First, an update from Intel on how it views the competitive landscape across its core businesses (particularly personal computers and data center) and any indications of share shifts from its major customers would be helpful. Next, an update on the company's progress in bringing its next-generation 10-nanometer chip manufacturing technology into production and its planned release schedule for the first (and potentially even its second) generation parts built using the technology could be interesting. And, finally, any updates from the company about the following topics may go a long way to improving the narrative around the stock:
I'm expecting this earnings report and accompanying conference call to, at the very least, be interesting and will be tuning into it. Read More Intel Corporation Earnings: What to Watch : http://ift.tt/2uQpw1Y
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during her weekly press conference in the Capitol building on July 20 in Washington, DC. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images House GOP leaders moved late Sunday to sidestep a lengthy debate over the intelligence community's budget, a decision that prompted howling from Democrats that the GOP was attempting to limit discussion about national security threats -- and ongoing investigations into election interference by Russia. In a scheduling note to members, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy revealed that a measure to authorize funding for U.S. intelligence agencies would be placed on the "suspension calendar," a list of bills marked for expedited passage. Those bills can't be amended, and are subject to sharply limited debate. Story Continued Below "The Republican move to place this intelligence bill on Monday's suspension calendar would deprive Democrats of the ability to have a full and open debate on critical intelligence issues at this sensitive time in our nation's history," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues shortly after the schedule was announced. "This is unacceptable when critical intelligence decisions are being made that impact America's national security, and while the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are leading investigations into Russia's continued efforts to undermine our democracy," she wrote. Pelosi is urging Democrats to vote against the measure to protest Republicans' procedural gambit, a move that could sink a bill that might otherwise have broad bipartisan support. Bills on the suspension calendar require two-thirds support to pass, which could give Democrats enough leverage to halt the spending measure. Pelosi said that aside from the effort to restrict debate, the bill itself is "not problematic." "This bill which authorizes tens of billions of dollars for the U.S. Intelligence Community should be considered" under standard House procedures, she said. Fights over the suspension calendar are unusual in the House. The list is typically reserved for bills that have broad bipartisan support and are narrow in scope. Primarily, it's a time-saving tool for the House to circumvent rules that require lengthy debate and the opportunity for amendments, which is often unnecessary for uncontroversial measures. The intelligence community's budget, though, is coming up for consideration at a time of deepening angst over the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks against investigators, who he accuses of orchestrating a "witch hunt" into whether campaign associates and allies aided the Russian effort. Trump has also disparaged intelligence agencies' conclusion that Russia interfered with the express goal of helping Trump win the election. This story tagged under:Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. “I had no improper contacts" with Russia, he says. | AP Photo In his prepared statement to Congress, the president's son-in-law recounts but downplays four meetings with Russians. In testimony Jared Kushner plans to submit before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday — a high-stakes, closed-door grilling session that is part of the investigation into possible collusion between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign — the powerful son-in-law will try to explain away his four contacts with Russian officials during the election and the transition as innocent interactions. In an 11-page opening statement provided to reporters early Monday morning ahead of his 10 a.m. appointment with the Senate, Kushner attempts to exonerate himself, writing: “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.” Story Continued Below Instead, Kushner paints a picture of himself as a loyal, overworked, under-experienced senior adviser to his father-in-law during a novice campaign that was never staffed up to win. The former real estate developer also blames the glaring omissions on his security clearance forms — which did not originally include several meetings with Russian officials that have since come to light — on an honest mistake made by his assistant at the time. And like others in the Trump orbit who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Inauguration Day, Kushner also said he had trouble remembering the official after their first brief, previously unreported encounter at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. — the same event where Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with, but didn't remember, the Russian ambassador. “I am not a person who has sought the spotlight,” Kushner says in his opening statement, according to a copy provided to POLITICO. But he explains that after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, his father-in-law asked Kushner to be the point of contact for foreign governments, and he was in touch with emissaries from 15 different countries, including Russia. To put his hectic life and schedule into context — and explain away his presence at a meeting where a Russian lawyer was hawking opposition research about Hillary Clinton — he also writes that he typically received about 200 emails a day during the campaign, and often didn’t read through every exchange. In his opening testimony, he walks through each of his four meetings with the Russians, downplaying all of them to brief, pro forma interactions that lead to no follow-ups. “I had no ongoing relationship with the Ambassador before the election, and had limited knowledge about him then,” he writes of Kislyak, with whom he reportedly tried to set up a communications backchannel during the transition. “In fact, on November 9, the day after the election, I could not even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador.” The most reliable politics newsletter.Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. Trying to prove his point, he adds: “when the campaign received an email purporting to be an official note of congratulations from President Putin, I was asked how we could verify it was real. To do so I thought the best way would be to ask the only contact I recalled meeting from the Russian government, which was the Ambassador I had met months earlier, so I sent an email asking Mr. [Demetri] Simes [the publisher of a foreign policy magazine], ‘What is the name of the Russian ambassador?'" Kushner also responds to a Reuters report that he had two follow-up calls with Kislyak. “A comprehensive review of my landline and cell phone records from the time does not reveal those calls,” he says of the reported calls in April and August of 2016. His second interaction with a Russian official was the now infamous Donald Trump, Jr. meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, that June. Kushner claims he had no idea what he was walking into. An email from his brother-in-law reminds him of the time change to 4 p.m. for the Trump Tower meeting, and Kushner writes that it was not abnormal to pop into each other’s offices for meetings. “That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time,” he writes. “Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as "Meeting: Don Jr.| Jared Kushner. No one else was mentioned.” The meeting, where Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Trump, Jr., and campaign operative Paul Manafort and four other peoplewere discussing Russian adoptions and were gathered to exchange information about Hillary Clinton, was outside of his purview, he writes. “I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote ‘Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting,’ Kushner writes. “No part of the meeting I attended included anything about the campaign, there was no follow up to the meeting that I am aware of, I do not recall how many people were there (or their names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted.” His third and final contact with a potential Russian agent, he claims, was a hoax email he received from a hacker trying to obtain Trump’s tax returns. During the transition, he said, his only meeting with Kislyak lasted 23 minutes. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Kushner explained to him that there was not. “I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis,” he explains. “and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration.” Kushner said he declined two attempts by Kislyak in December for a follow-up, eventually sending his assistant instead. It was there that Kislyak recommended that Kushner sit down with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Kremlin-linked Russian bank. All that was exchanged, he said, was a humble piece of art and a bag of dirt from the Belarus village where his grandparents were born. “There were no specific policies discussed,” he said. “We had no discussion about the sanctions imposed by the Obama Administration. At no time was there any discussion about my companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind.” The Putin-linked bank, however, has provided a different explanation. The Washington Post reported that the bank claimed the meeting was part of a new business strategy and that it was held with Kushner in his role as the head of his family’s real estate business, Kushner Companies. As for the confusion about his security clearance forms, he blames the glaring omissions on an assistant. “[People at my New York office] sent an email to my assistant in Washington, communicating that the changes to one particular section were complete; my assistant interpreted that message as meaning that the entire form was completed,” he writes. “At that point, the form was a rough draft and still had many omissions including not listing any foreign government contacts and even omitted the address of my father-in-law (which was obviously well known). Because of this miscommunication, my assistant submitted the draft on January 18, 2017.” Kushner is so rarely heard from in public that when he spoke, briefly, at a tech conference earlier this summer, many people joked they didn't know what his voice sounded like. "It has been my practice not to appear in the media or leak information in my own defense," Kushner notes in his testimony. But it won't be his last time on the stand. Kushner, who will face a second grilling by the House on Tuesday, has been preparing for both sessions with his lawyers. He claims, at the end of his lengthy statement: “I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required.” This story tagged under:Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. By Devlin Barrett,Congressional investigators will question senior White House adviser Jared Kushner on Monday, as the multiple probes into contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign intensify and focus more directly on those closest to the president. Kushner is scheduled to meet behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday, then be questioned — again in private — by the House Intelligence Committee the following day. Kushner is not the only one close to the president facing greater scrutiny from Congress. The Senate Judiciary Committee had planned to question Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort this week, but that has been delayed indefinitely while the committee continues to negotiate with the men’s lawyers for documents and information. Looming over all those discussions is the probe by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III — a criminal investigation to see if there was coordination between agents of the Russian government and advisers to Trump during the campaign. That probe is also looking into possible financial misdeeds by Manafort and others, according to people familiar with the inquiries. [Trump team seeks to control, block Mueller’s Russia investigation] Some lawyers not involved in the case expressed surprise that, given the potential legal pitfalls of the criminal investigation, Kushner or any other Trump advisers would take the risk of talking to Congress, given that such statements could be used against them later by criminal prosecutors. “It’s a very difficult tightrope to walk,’’ said Justin Dillon, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “He has to balance the political fallout from taking the Fifth Amendment with the potential criminal fallout of talking.’’ Dillon predicted anything Kushner tells the committee will be shared with Mueller. The Kushner interview also comes after the president and his legal team have discussed his power to pardon those close to him and even himself. After a Washington Post report on those conversations, the president tweeted this weekend that he has “complete power to pardon.’’ Dillon said the possibility of a future pardon could affect Kushner’s overall legal strategy. “No one who has paid any attention to this administration should doubt that if Kushner ever needs a pardon, he will get one,’’ he said. Through lawyers and his spokesman, Kushner has long insisted he did nothing wrong. Kushner attorney Abbe Lowell has said his client “is prepared to voluntarily cooperate and provide whatever information he has on the investigations to Congress.’’ He said Kushner “appreciates the opportunity to assist in putting this matter to rest.’’ Kushner is expected to answer the committee’s questions and not invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to a person familiar with Kushner’s thinking. Kushner is not expected to be under oath during his questioning Monday — but that arrangement still poses significant legal risks to someone under investigation. In 2009, baseball player Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty to the crime of making misrepresentations to Congress when he denied having conversations with another player about steroid and human growth hormone. That interview with committee staffers took place behind closed doors, and Tejada was not under oath at the time. Kushner is likely to face extensive questions about meetings he attended with Russian government officials or people connected to the Russian government. In June 2016, he attended a meeting at Trump Tower in New York arranged by his brother in law, Donald Trump Jr., on the premise that a lawyer had damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. That meeting is also being investigated by the FBI and Mueller. [Here’s what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests ] Washington attorney Karina V. Lynch said Sunday that she has been hired to help represent the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr. Lynch previously served as legal counsel to investigative committees on Capitol Hill, including serving as investigative counsel Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who pressed for Trump Jr. to testify behind closed doors this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Lynch said she will supplement rather than replace Alan Futerfas, who has handled Trump Jr.’s response to the revelation about the June 2016 meeting. Investigators have also been interested in meetings Kushner had in December — after Trump’s election but before he was sworn in as president. That month, he met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and then later met with Sergey Gorkov, head of Vnesheconbank, which has been under U.S. sanctions since 2014. The bank has said the session was to talk to Kushner about his family’s real estate business. The White House has said the meeting was unrelated to business and was part of Kushner’s busy diplomatic schedule. Kushner’s meetings with foreigners, and Russians in particular, have become a sticking point for his security clearance process. Three times since January, Kushner has filed updates to his national security questionnaire, to add previously undisclosed meetings with foreign officials. Such mistakes can have significant legal and career consequences for government employees, because it is a crime to submit false information on such forms. One update added more than 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which came during the presidential transition, according to one of Kushner’s lawyers, who have said he did nothing wrong and his meetings simply reflect his role as Trump’s principle adviser on foreign policy issues. Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report. Read More Kushner to face intel committee on Monday behind closed doors : http://ift.tt/2uqbbqxAnthony Scaramucci, the recently named White House communications director, on Sunday outed President Trump as the anonymous source who had expressed doubt to him that Russia interfered in last year's presidential election. “How about it was the president, Jake?” Scaramucci told host Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union." ADVERTISEMENT Scaramucci's remark came after Tapper pushed back on Scaramucci's vague claim that "somebody" claimed to him that Russian hackers are so sophisticated they never would have been detected if they had hacked the election. “There’s a lot of disinformation out there,” Scaramucci told Tapper. “Somebody said to me yesterday — I won’t tell you who — that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it, you would have never had any evidence of them.” Trump has repeatedly expressed doubt that Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign. A day before the president met with Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier this month, Trump publicly stated that "other people in other countries" could have meddled in the U.S. election, adding that "nobody really knows for sure." Scaramucci's remarks come amid uncertainty on whether the president will support a bipartisan Russian sanctions bill, despite White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisting on the same day that the Trump administration supports the measure. "He hasn't made the decision yet to sign that bill one way or another," Scaramucci said. Read More Scaramucci outs Trump as anonymous source disputing Russian hack intel : http://ift.tt/2uNtMj4Intel released a new CPU model this week, the Intel Core i9 7900X, which is the latest model to feature a new cache architecture that hardware experts believe it will make exploitation of side-channel attacks a lot harder. This improvement in CPU security is attributed to a new cache architecture that Intel developed for the Knights micro architecture and Skylake server CPU models, and which Intel added to i9, a line of CPU models for HEDT (High-End-DeskTop) products. Intel makes a small change to cache architectureThe changes to Intel's previous cache architecture are small. The structure has remained the same, with three levels as before. 〉〉 Level 1 (L1) - two L1 low-latency caches, one for handling user data and one for handling CPU instructions. The new Intel CPU cache architecture quadruples the size of L2 and makes L3 a non-inclusive cache. Previously L3 was an inclusive cache, meaning the same data could have been loaded in multiple caches on different cores at the same time. Intel did this for the sake of processing speed. The new L3 cache is now non-inclusive, meaning data in L3 will not be cached in other caches at the same time. Researcher says new cache architecture is good for securityAccording to G Data Principal Malware Analyst Anders Fogh, this small change in cache architecture has improved the CPU's security, as it thwarted some types of side-channel attacks. The term of side-channel attack is used to define a type of attack used for leaking data from a computer's memory or CPU, usually focused on leaking data specific to encrypted operations. The researcher believes this new cache architecture will block Flush+Flush attacks and some of the Rowhammer attacks, but not CLFlush and Flush+Reload. "Having a non-inclusive L3 cache is significantly more secure from a side channel perspective than an inclusive in cross core scenarios," Fogh explains. "This opens up for defending these attacks, by isolating different security domains on different cores potentially dynamically," Fogh also adds. "While flush+reload is likely to be unaffected, this attack is also the easiest to thwart in real life scenarios as avoiding shared memory cross security domains is an available and effective countermeasure." Despite the improvements, Fogh doesn't see this new cache architecture trickling down to mid and low-end notebooks and laptops anytime soon. Nonetheless, most side-channel attacks are developed and aimed at high-end server products, usually deployed in cloud and hosting environments, where a side-channel attack could allow an attacker access to troves of enterprise data stored in the cloud. Last year, Fogh authored a research paper that showed how the design of DRAM memory makes devices insecure. Read More New Intel CPU Cache Architecture Boosts Protection Against Side-Channel Attacks : http://ift.tt/2uLUloU(JNi.Media) Intel further solidifies its strong connection with Israel with the announcement that it will open a new chip manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat. This follows Intel’s acquisition of Israeli company Mobileye in the spring for $15 billion, an outstanding takeover premium. Intel’s takeover of the maker of chips for cameras and driver-assistance technology set the stage for the opening of the new plant which will make delivery of chips more convenient. Production at the new plant is expected to begin by 2018.
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The Kiryat Gat plant follows a trend of Intel expanding its operations in Israel. The world’s largest chipmaker already has a plant in Kiryat Gat that was built in 2005, costs $4 billion to build and employed 2,000 workers. In 2015, Intel refurbished this plant to prepare it to manufacture the newest generation of chips. In a time of debates over Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, Intel’s robust presence in Israel is reassuring, since it is unlikely those who oppose Israel could boycott the world’s leading chipmaker for its Israeli chip factories, even if they wanted to. Intel is currently Israel’s largest tech employer; the Startup Nation has created over a billion chips for Intel and the new factory will keep production running.
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Read More Intel to Open New Chip Plant in Israel and Create 1500 Jobs : http://ift.tt/2tzS9AU
Semiconductor giant Intel(NASDAQ:INTC) is taking its business in two directions these days. The middle ground between the big-iron data center market and the lively Internet of Things sector is fading away, as Intel's management prefers to focus on the extremes of its bisecting target market. Don't get me wrong; The client computing segment where Intel sells core processors and chipsets for consumer-grade PC systems remains an important and profitable business. That group produced 54% of Intel's total sales in the first quarter of 2017, along with a staggering 84% of the company's operating profits. But that's down from 62% of sales and 95% of operating income in the fiscal year 2014, and the trend toward a more diverse business model will continue. That's the big picture to keep in mind when Intel reports second-quarter results on Thursday night. Here are some finer details to watch in that wide-angle shot. Intel's guidance targets
Data source: Intel. Bear in mind that operating margins were unusually thin in the year-ago quarter due to a $1.4 billion bundle of one-time restructuring expenses. Beyond the numbersThe pending buyout of autonomous driving systems specialist Mobileye(NYSE:MBLY) is moving closer to completion. In the last three months, the deal cleared regulatory approvals in several countries and got approval from Mobileye's shareholders. In other news, both Intel and smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices(NASDAQ:AMD) has released several brand new processors in recent months. Several chips based on Intel's Kaby Lake architecture started making their way into desktops and server systems in the second quarter, facing off against AMD's Ryzen and EPYC products. As usual, AMD and Intel report their results in the span of a couple of days. Investors and processor enthusiasts alike will have a much clearer picture of competitive trends in the PC processor market by the end of the week. Long-term strategyAbove all else, investors and analysts will be looking for a coherent long-term vision. The Mobileye buyout is set to move Intel deeper into the automotive computing sector, but Intel is also giving up on smart watches and fitness trackers right now. So the company is refining its next-generation growth strategy rather than charging full tilt at every potential target market. We need more detail on what's next, and how Intel plans to balance its long, slow depreciation of the PC sector without undermining its largest cash cow. It's a tricky balancing act, and every detail matters. Read More What To Look For In Intel Inc.'s Earnings Report : http://ift.tt/2eEgqPLSemiconductor giant Intel(NASDAQ: INTC) is taking its business in two directions these days. The middle ground between the big-iron data center market and the lively Internet of Things sector is fading away, as Intel's management prefers to focus on the extremes of its bisecting target market. Don't get me wrong; The client computing segment where Intel sells core processors and chipsets for consumer-grade PC systems remains an important and profitable business. That group produced 54% of Intel's total sales in the first quarter of 2017, along with a staggering 84% of the company's operating profits. But that's down from 62% of sales and 95% of operating income in the fiscal year 2014, and the trend toward a more diverse business model will continue. That's the big picture to keep in mind when Intel reports second-quarter results on Thursday night. Here are some finer details to watch in that wide-angle shot. Intel's guidance targets
Data source: Intel. Beyond the numbersThe pending buyout of autonomous driving systems specialist Mobileye(NYSE: MBLY) is moving closer to completion. In the last three months, the deal cleared regulatory approvals in several countries and got approval from Mobileye's shareholders. In other news, both Intel and smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices(NASDAQ: AMD) has released several brand new processors in recent months. Several chips based on Intel's Kaby Lake architecture started making their way into desktops and server systems in the second quarter, facing off against AMD's Ryzen and EPYC products. As usual, AMD and Intel report their results in the span of a couple of days. Investors and processor enthusiasts alike will have a much clearer picture of competitive trends in the PC processor market by the end of the week. Long-term strategyAbove all else, investors and analysts will be looking for a coherent long-term vision. The Mobileye buyout is set to move Intel deeper into the automotive computing sector, but Intel is also giving up on smart watches and fitness trackers right now. So the company is refining its next-generation growth strategy rather than charging full tilt at every potential target market. We need more detail on what's next, and how Intel plans to balance its long, slow depreciation of the PC sector without undermining its largest cash cow. It's a tricky balancing act, and every detail matters. 10 stocks we like better than Intel When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Intel wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. *Stock Advisor returns as of July 6, 2017 Semiconductor giant Intel(NASDAQ: INTC) is taking its business in two directions these days. The middle ground between the big-iron data center market and the lively Internet of Things sector is fading away, as Intel's management prefers to focus on the extremes of its bisecting target market. Don't get me wrong; The client computing segment where Intel sells core processors and chipsets for consumer-grade PC systems remains an important and profitable business. That group produced 54% of Intel's total sales in the first quarter of 2017, along with a staggering 84% of the company's operating profits. But that's down from 62% of sales and 95% of operating income in the fiscal year 2014, and the trend toward a more diverse business model will continue. That's the big picture to keep in mind when Intel reports second-quarter results on Thursday night. Here are some finer details to watch in that wide-angle shot. Intel's guidance targets
Data source: Intel. Beyond the numbersThe pending buyout of autonomous driving systems specialist Mobileye(NYSE: MBLY) is moving closer to completion. In the last three months, the deal cleared regulatory approvals in several countries and got approval from Mobileye's shareholders. In other news, both Intel and smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices(NASDAQ: AMD) has released several brand new processors in recent months. Several chips based on Intel's Kaby Lake architecture started making their way into desktops and server systems in the second quarter, facing off against AMD's Ryzen and EPYC products. As usual, AMD and Intel report their results in the span of a couple of days. Investors and processor enthusiasts alike will have a much clearer picture of competitive trends in the PC processor market by the end of the week. Long-term strategyAbove all else, investors and analysts will be looking for a coherent long-term vision. The Mobileye buyout is set to move Intel deeper into the automotive computing sector, but Intel is also giving up on smart watches and fitness trackers right now. So the company is refining its next-generation growth strategy rather than charging full tilt at every potential target market. We need more detail on what's next, and how Intel plans to balance its long, slow depreciation of the PC sector without undermining its largest cash cow. It's a tricky balancing act, and every detail matters. 10 stocks we like better than Intel When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Intel wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. *Stock Advisor returns as of July 6, 2017 |
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