U.S. stock futures are trading higher this morning as the desperately needed rebound looks to extend its gains for the third day in a row. Ahead of the bell, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average are up 0.51% and S&P 500 futures are higher by 0.43%. Nasdaq-100 futures have added 0.25%. In the options pits, call volume outpaced puts even as overall volume levels fell back on the day. Specifically, about 17.6 million calls and 16.3 million puts changed hands on the session. At the CBOE the single-session equity put/call volume ratio rose to 0.73. Meanwhile, the 10-day moving average ticked higher to a new 2018 high of 0.82. Here are three of the stocks landing atop the most-actives list yesterday. Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and Ford (NYSE:F) saw renewed options interest on technically driven rebounds. And Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) benefited from recent news out of Israel regarding a $185 million grant and planned $5 billion production expansion. Let’s take a closer look: Coca-Cola (KO)KO stock has enjoyed a two-day snapback that reclaimed all that was lost on Christmas Eve’s historic market selloff. And with that, the soft drink giant is within striking distance of its record highs. Company-specific news was absent yesterday, but that didn’t stop traders from jumping into the options market to place their bets. Consumer staples like KO stock have held up very well amid the market turmoil. With this week’s rapid recovery, Coke is now up 3.6% year-to-date. On the options trading front, traders came after calls with a vengeance. Activity swelled to 390% of the average daily volume, with 89,811 total contracts traded. 85% of the trading came from call options alone. Implied volatility retreated to 27% placing it at the 77th percentile of its one-year range. Premiums are now pricing-in daily moves of 80 cents or 1.7%. Ford (F)Ford shares are fighting back after notching a new nine-year low amid continued economic slowdown worries and tariff trauma. The past two trading sessions sport a pair of bottoming tails showing sharp intraday bullish reversals. The turnaround attempts come as buyers seek to salvage something (anything!) from a dreadful December. With F stock submerged beneath all major moving averages and potential resistance aplenty, any rally that arrives over the coming days should be eyed with extreme skepticism. On the options trading front, calls dominated the session. Activity increased to 138% of the average daily volume, with 105,828 total contracts traded. Calls contributed 71% of the day’s total. Implied volatility held steady on the day to 54% placing it at the 89th percentile of its one-year range. Premiums are pricing in daily moves of 27 cents or 3.4%. Intel (INTC)Considering the bloodbath the Nasdaq is currently suffering, Intel’s resilience in Q4 is downright impressive. Due to a lift in call activity, the chip giant found itself on yesterday’s most-active list. The only major news hitting the wires over the past week came via Reuters and outlined how Israel was giving Intel a $185 million grant “in return for a planned $5 billion expansion of its production operations in Israel.” The price trend for INTC stock has flattened, which is a win when compared to the broader market’s dramatic descent. I suggest waiting for a break of either $50 or $43 before getting overly affectionate about a directional move. On the options trading front, calls outpaced puts on the day. Total activity lifted to 133% of the average daily volume, with 95,407 total contracts traded. Calls accounted for 61% of the day’s take. Implied volatility slid slightly on the day to 41% placing it at the 81st percentile of its one-year range. Premiums are pricing in daily moves of $1.20 or 2.6% As of this writing, Tyler Craig didn’t hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. Check out his recently released Bear Market Survival Guide to learn how to defend your portfolio against market volatility. Read More Friday’s Vital Data: Coca-Cola, Intel and Ford - Investorplace.com : http://bit.ly/2GHpjWo
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As part of our end-of-year round-ups and coverage, we’re taking a look at what to expect from the major players in the PC industry as we head into 2019. Intel recently gave a major roadmap update, with details on multiple new technologies, including new 3D chip stacking, its Sunny Cove architecture, FPGAs, and Optane. It’s also planning new Xeon microprocessors like Cascade Lake AP, with up to 48 cores and 12 memory channels. Intel’s Sunny Cove disclosures can be seen in the slideshow below: Intel is in the midst of a complex transition, affecting not just its various product lines, but the markets it sells into and the ways it designs its products. The company has taken multiple steps to improve the usefulness of Xeon microprocessors for AI, deep learning, and similar workloads. Cascade Lake will add Vector Neural Network Instructions (VNNI), which are intended to improve inference performance on Xeon. Then, later in 2019, Cooper Lake will add support for Google’s bfloat16 format, which is generally superior than the float16 format when converting to float32, at least when used for AI/ML purposes. Intel isn’t walking away from the PC market that has defined much of its existence, but it’s moving to differentiate itself and launch new products in areas where it might once have competed solely using x86 architectures. Its investments in FPGAs and the Neural Compute Stick are both intended to target different emerging areas of compute. It wants to create new uses for storage and non-volatile RAM through Optane and the launch of its Persistent Memory DIMMs. Foveros is a brand-new interconnect technology to enable 3D chip stacking, while EMIB is a proven standard for 2D interconnects that serves as a supposedly cheaper alternative to a 2.5D interposer architecture. Intel is ramping up its investment in modems and connectivity, with the long-term goal of being a major player in the 5G ecosystem. And then, of course, there’s the company’s GPU efforts. Intel’s Gen 11 desktop graphics solution will debut with up to 64 EUs in a GT2 design, compared to the 24 EUs the company has offered in that configuration to-date, followed by a full desktop launch with discrete GPUs in 2020 as well. Unlike AMD, Intel’s 2019 progress isn’t tied as cleanly to a single node transition. This is, to be fair, partly because many of Intel’s major product innovations won’t launch until 2020 (Sunny Cove), and its architecture and process nodes were previously more tightly coupled than they should have been. But Intel’s work in other spaces, like 5G, AI compute via Movidius, and Optane aren’t cleanly tied to advances in semiconductor manufacturing either, at least not the process node variety. AMD has positioned its 7nm product launches as an opportunity to win more market share; Intel, at this point, is trying to reassure investors that 10nm will ship on-time and on-schedule. Instead of pinning product advances directly to the launch of 10nm, it spent Architecture Day discussing how in the future, there will be less rigidity between when a technology is planned to launch and the node it’s planned to launch on. The critical difference between AMD and Intel’s plans for 2019, I’d argue, is the areas in which they compete. AMD is pushing to retake space in “classic” markets like desktop PCs, server, and mobile. Yes, it’s also making a play for the HPC and AI space with its Radeon Instinct brand of accelerators, but it’s not clear how much traction it will win in these spaces. There are rumors that AMD may have built Instinct as a custom design for specific customer(s), for example. The advent of cloud computing may have changed the server business and ushered in new customer hardware requirements, but it represents an iteration on an existing theme. 5G, the IoT, AI, self-driving cars, deep learning — these are entirely new spaces, and Intel’s focus these days is on trail-blazing these new markets as much as it is on building conventional PC hardware. That’s part of what makes it harder to predict what’s ahead for Intel in 2019. Some of these bets won’t really start to pay off until the 2020 timeframe. Some of them, like Intel’s discrete GPUs, won’t even come to market until sometime in 2020. For all the negativity swirling around Intel in the PC consumer space, the company is enjoying a period of fundamentally excellent results. Its Q3 2018 results were record-smashing. Data-centric revenue rose 22 percent, PC revenue grew 16 percent. The company raised its full-year revenue guidance by $1.7B in Q3 alone. Plenty of people were dubious when Intel claimed its chip shortage was due to increased demand for its server parts, but the company’s revenue has indicated otherwise. Intel’s full-year revenue guidance for 2018 is $6B higher now than it was in January of this year, on the strength of robust demand for its hardware. It’ll seek to maintain that growth rate in 2019. Intel now competes in enough markets where AMD has no presence that the old “AMD versus Intel” framing, while accurate enough in the spaces where they compete, no longer captures the full scale of Intel itself. What we expect to see in 2019, in aggregate, is stronger evidence on whether or not Intel has ably positioned itself to take advantage of the trends in IoT connectivity, edge computing, 5G, self-driving cars, and a host of other emerging opportunities. Losing market share to AMD is virtually inevitable in certain spaces — when you own 90-95 percent of a market, the only direction to go is down — but how much of this we will see and whether or not it blunts Intel’s overall success or not will depend as much on the long-term technological bets Intel has made as on any moves from its competition. Now Read: Apple 2019 Look-Ahead: Glimpse Of Future MacBook Pro MacBook Air Seen In 2018 Intel Roadmap - Forbes12/28/2018 The MacBook Pro and MacBook Air should benefit from Intel's chip makeover in 2019. Intel is slated to move to its Sunny Cove microarchitecture, the chipmaker said recently -- which would put 10-nanometer (nm) Intel processors in Macs for the first time. Intel in 2019: Intel has been stuck at 14nm since 2014 -- though it has made iterative improvements to that manufacturing process over the years as it announced new chips. Enter 10nm Sunny Cove, which is designed to increase performance per clock and improve power efficiency. But the more interesting upgrade will be Gen11 graphics that roughly doubles the performance of Gen9* graphics. Intel says Gen11 will break the 1 TFLOPS barrier, a big boost for gaming and media applications. The number of Gen11 execution cores -- or so-called execution units (EUs) -- will also see a big increase.
The Next MacBook Pro: Current 2018 13-inch MacBook Pros with Touch Bar use Intel's mobile Coffee Lake U series processors released in the second quarter of 2018. The 15-inch uses six-core Coffee Lake H, also launched in Q2. If Apple follows past practice, a future 13-inch MacBook Pro will get Intel's top-of-the-line Gen11 graphics with revved up quad-core processors, while the 15-inch MBP will get updated to Intel's latest many-core mobile processors. The 13-inch MacBook Pro would benefit the most since it relies on Intel graphics. Current 13-inch MacBook Pros with Touch Bar, for example, rely solely on Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655. On the other hand, a future 15-inch MacBook Pro would not be as affected on the graphics side since it also comes equipped with AMD graphics (currently AMD Radeon Pro Vega). The Next MacBook Air: A 2019 MacBook Air update would use a follow-on to the very-low-power (7-watt) Y series dual-core Amber Lake — used in the current late-2018 MBA. In fact, very-low-power Y series processors** could reap the biggest rewards from the move to the smaller 10nm geometries that offer improved power-saving characteristics. Apple uses the Y series in its most power-sensitive and thinnest MacBooks (which includes the mid-2017 12-inch MacBook in addition to the new MacBook Air). Next, next MacBook: a big surprise or just a big 'maybe' The biggest change of all -- see this report from Bloomberg -- would be the switch to Apple's own processors, like the A12X Bionic chip inside the newest 12.9-inch iPad Pro. That Apple chip smokes even recent Intel Core i7 mobile processors. But reports prognosticating about Apple dumping Intel for its own CPU have been around since 2011 so I wouldn't hold your breath. Besides, the 2018 MacBook Air with Intel's latest power-efficient processor is up to the task (see notes at bottom). Or if you want the next best thing, the 2018 12.9-inch iPad Pro, combined with Apple's Smart Keyboard Folio, offers a good taste of a future iOS MacBook with an Apple CPU. ---- NOTES: *Intel, in effect, skipped Gen10, according to Anandtech. For more details see Anandtech on what it calls Intel's "failed 10nm Cannonlake chip." **I am currently using a late-2018 MacBook Air with an Amber Lake dual-core Y series processor. The 2018 MacBook Air is surprisingly fast and I have, so far, experienced no lag or performance issues. In fact, I see no difference -- doing everyday tasks -- between the 2018 MacBook Air and my quad-core mid-2017 MacBook Pro 15. However, I do see a remarkable difference in battery life: the MacBook Air outlasts the MacBook Pro by hours. (More on this in a coming review of the 2018 MacBook Air.) Read More Apple 2019 Look-Ahead: Glimpse Of Future MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Seen In 2018 Intel Roadmap - Forbes : http://bit.ly/2QTnwlrThe softening outlook for semiconductors hit all technology stocks late in 2018, including chip-giant Intel (ticker: INTC). Now trading at 10 times next year’s estimated earnings, Intel stock illustrates a current market quandary. How cheap is cheap enough? As the year comes to a close, we’re taking a look at all 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, starting with the worst performer— Goldman Sachs Group (GS)—and working our way up to the highest-flying stock in the benchmark, Merck (MRK). The rankings will shift over the next couple days, but the stories behind the stocks shouldn’t. For Intel, 2018 was a strong year for demand. Management raised their full-year revenue forecast three times by an aggregate amount of about $6 billion to a total of around $71 billion. Still, Intel stock is flat year to date and is down 19.5% from its 52-week high. Newsletter Sign-upAnalysts have been cooling on Intel shares too, with fewer recommending the stock now than at the start of the year. Only 46% of Wall Street analysts covering the company rate its stock a buy, compared with the average buy-rating ratio of about 56% for the Dow stocks. The company’s 2018 performance doesn’t seem to be the reason for the decline. Intel has outperformed other semiconductor stocks, with the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index slumping 9.1% year to date. It is the overall macroeconomic outlook that appears to be problematic for Intel and the semiconductor sector. KeyBanc analyst Weston Twigg says there is plenty to worry about: “uncertainty regarding the impact of the trade war, along with relatively weak trends in China, autos, industrials, consumer, white goods, smartphones, PCs, and hyperscale.” All those issues are weighing on investors’ views of semiconductor stocks. Twigg added, “we believe overall semiconductor demand has additional downside risk entering the first half on 2019.” Intel has acknowledged some of those headwinds for 2019 as well. “China’s a dominant market for us,” Intel management stated on their recent quarterly conference call. “As this most recent round of tariffs kind of play out...it’s going to be a wait-and-see as we go into 2019.” But, management also reiterated some of the long-term tailwinds benefiting their business, as the company plays “a bigger and bigger role in the increased needs for data.” Intel’s chip sales to cloud computing providers rose 50% in the third quarter. Intel will next speak with analysts and investors in January at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Then the company will give its 2019 outlook on its fourth-quarter conference call later next month. At these events, investors could have their worse fears confirmed—that business trends have indeed softened. But some worries appear to be built into the stock price already. Intel’s current price-to-earnings ratio is close to the lowest levels experienced over the past decade and about a 20% discount to Intel’s average. The recent stock market selloff seems to indicate a recession, or something worse, is just over the horizon. However, if trade conflicts are resolved quickly and if economic growth continues in 2019, then investors may want to keep Intel and other cyclical stocks on their radar. And even if 2019 is soft, Intel’s valuation and its leverage to the dominant technology trends of cloud computing, autonomous driving, and augmented reality could make next year a good time to add some Intel stock to portfolios with a longer-term focus. Write to Al Root at [email protected] Technology touches almost every aspect of our lives and this trend is accelerating exponentially. Thanks to the advent of the cloud, this is likely to continue for decades to come. Businesses and governments are completely committed to the migration to the electronic world. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is one of the suppliers to the brains of all tech. So it will have sustainable strong demand for their products and services. They have been leaders since the early days of computers. I remember getting excited about upgrading from 286 to 386 chips. Now we carry powerful computers in our pockets. Instead of IBM or Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) computer wars, we have iOs versus Android. Now INTC it has competition from Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and long-time rival Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD), but it still remains a leader. However, INTC management is in limbo since they are still seeking a permanent CEO. But the bench is deep enough to keep the company executing on plans already in motion. This year, AMD is the Wall Street darling of the group even though it has the shakiest fundamentals on paper. NVDA is the fallen angel. It was the chosen one until October, and then a disaster November earnings report knocked off its perch. INTC stock sits in the middle with a -1% year-to-date performance which is much lower than AMD’s 63% but folds better than NVDA’s -33% for the same period. Yesterday, they all soared on absolutely no specific news. INTC is a stock to own for decades to come. But it is hard to chase any stock the day after it was up 6% like it was on Wednesday. But this comes after a 24% correction from the July highs so this hard bounce is not a deal breaker. The fall from grace was not stock-specific, the VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (NYSEARCA:SMH) is down 15% year-to-date. So there will be more upside for INTC in the future even though a good bit of the immediate upside has already been had. Intel survived the dot-com boom and the 2008 crisis. This is a proven management structure and a long-term hold in any diversified portfolio. INTC will shrug the current headline threats. Short term, I expect the indices to fade and perhaps even set new lows this year. But if and when that happens it would be an opportunity to reload or add to quality stocks. Long term, if equity markets are higher then Intel stock is definitely higher. So buying it soon may not be the absolute bottom, but it will be a great start. Trading INTC StockSince there are still so many looming macroeconomic and geopolitical headlines, I would not take a full position in INTC all at once. This way I leave room to add more if it goes even lower. Fundamentally, INTC is cheap as it sells at a 10 trailing 12 months price-to-earnings ratio. Cheap can get cheaper but owning it down here is not likely to be a colossal mistake in the long run. Compare that to AMD that still loses money, and NVDA sells at a 18 P/E. Technically, the clearest entry point into INTC stock was in October of 2017 when it breached a monthly upside bullish pattern that targeted the 2018 highs. Now and after the correction it started testing that same neckline zone from which they sprang last year. The bulls still have room to $38 per share and still maintain the long-term upper hand. The chip sector is in the direct line of the tariff war fire fight. So the next 90 days will likely be tumultuous and I expect that my resolve will be tested. To mitigate some of the INTC C-suite risk I can split my longs between it and the SMH ETF. This way I can still participate in the chip sector’s upside potential while hedging my stock-specific risk. Furthermore, we may not have heard the last of the feud between President Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Equity markets do not like to see skirmishes between the U.S. Chief in Charge and the leader of its monetary affairs. Short-term caution is still advised. Click here for more of my market thesis and get an ongoing free copy of my weekly newsletters. Nicolas Chahine is the managing director of SellSpreads.com. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him as @racernic on Twitter and Stocktwits. Read More Why Intel Stock Should Be in Everyone’s Portfolio — Even Now - Investorplace.com : http://bit.ly/2LARCVaWell, 2018 has been quite the year for Intel. And if I’m being honest, I don’t mean that in an overwhelmingly positive way. Certainly from a PR point of view things have been very, very difficult for the chip-making monster, with losing a CEO and almost an entire manufacturing process node too. Intel has also lost its place as the biggest semiconductor company on the planet too, with Samsung taking over this year. How very careless… But that’s not to say that 2018 hasn’t still been a very successful year for Intel from a financial point of view. It’s share price has gone up and down, as the markets will, and has ended up at practically the same place it started the year. Which, considering what a volatile year it’s been for the big tech companies that can almost be considered a win on its own. Intel has also consistently reporting record revenue figures for three consecutive financial quarters this year, and has been raising its expected 2018 revenue forecast after every quarter’s results have been posted. So, from a purely financial standpoint it’s been great. From a product, marketing, and PR perspective, however, it’s been a bit of a nightmare. Though it is at least ending the year on a positive note… but how did it all start out? Intel 2018 review: January – MarchIt’s got to be said that 2018 had the worst possible start for Intel with the announcement of both the Spectre and Meltdown bugs around the start of the CES show at the start of January. Admittedly it was bad for a host of tech companies, with AMD CPUs also affected by the security flaw which operated through speculated execution paths, giving malevolent users the ability to read system memory. There were different variants discovered, different flaws unveiled as the year went on, and software fixes rolled out. Future chips have also had hardware mitigations added, but through it all, however, has been the spectre (teehee) of performance degradation issues with any of the mitigations used. But there was also a little hope in early 2018 too, with Intel announcing the details of the Kaby Lake G CPUs which combined Intel CPUs with AMD’s Vega graphics. Was this the start of a wonderful year filled with intra-company cooperation? A year where all past ills were forgiven and everyone worked together for the greater good? No, that is not how 2018 will be known. February saw Intel actually pulling the integrated graphics – its own this time – from a set of processors. Its Cannonlake mobile chips, pretty much the only announced 10nm processors, were leaked with some missing graphics components, reportedly so they could deal with the terrible yields of the 10nm node. Silicon alternative time: The best CPUs for gaming right now Then in March Intel released its latest NUC, the Hades Canyon NUC. It was crazy expensive, but held the fastest version of Intel’s AMD collaboration chip inside it which meant it had genuinely impressive gaming performance. Intel 2018 review: April – JuneEver since Raja Koduri bailed out of AMD, and joined to head up the Core and Visual Computing group at Intel, it had been teasing the prospect of a discrete GPU architecture of the future. April was when we first heard the Arctic Sound codename, suggested to be the name given to the discrete graphics card his team was working on. But for every ray of light in 2018 came a shower of dirt. And so in April Intel also announced that it was, once again, delaying the volume release of CPUs based on its 10nm production process. Originally set for a late 2018 launch, Brian Krzanich announced it was been kicked back to sometime in 2019. Which later in the year became late 2019. But it’s not just the 10nm CPUs this affected as first hints that the delay had wider ramifications became clear in May. Intel announced it was putting its H310 chipset on hiatus as it couldn’t manufacture enough 14nm silicon to cope with demand. Because it hadn’t switched some of its manufacturing over to the 10nm node, and had moved some 22nm production onto the 14nm process, everything needed 14nm silicon. This unprecedented demand proved too much for Intel from May onwards, and is still an issue now. But June was also a time for celebration. The 40th anniversary of the seminal 8086 chip was marked by Intel releasing the very, very limited edition Core i7 8086K processor, a 5GHz quad-core, 8-thread CPU. It even gave away 8,086 chips in a sweepstake. On the same day it also announced a massive 28-core processor, giving Intel back its core-count lead against the AMD Threadripper opposition. Sadly for Intel that lead lasted less than 24 hours and was also marred by the announcement its presenter had forgotten the live 5GHz demo of the 28-core chip was actually overclocked and not an out-of-the-box frequency, as was hinted at. June only got worse too, with long-time CEO, Brian Krzanich, being forced to resign over revelations about an extra-marital affair with a fellow employee. It was before his time as CEO, but Intel takes a dim view of such things and Krzanich had to go. Robert Swan took over immediately as interim CEO, and is still there. Loving life. Probably. Intel 2018 review: July – SeptemberJuly was mercifully quiet for Intel, but things started heating up in August as it announced the first consumer QLC SSD, the 660p. The cheaper NAND flash meant the 512GB version was just $100, an absolute bargain at a time where SSD prices were being pushed ever higher by memory prices. August also saw Intel with its first official tease of the discrete GPU set to arrive in 2020, promising to “set our graphics free.” We still haven’t heard much about the project, but Intel has repeatedly promised a 2020 launch, so that seems carved in stone. Until it inevitably slips, obviously. September saw JP Morgan claim that Intel’s CPU shortage was worsening throughout the year, which potentially helped prompt the company into a sharp response. A response to the tune of an extra $1bn to help shore up its manufacturing deficiencies. But finally Intel was able to unveil a consumer desktop CPU matching AMD’s eight-core, 16-thread configuration, and announced the “world’s best gaming processor” with a whole host of independent performance benchmarks to prove it. I’ll admit, sitting at the event in New York I took the benchmarks at face value, but it later transpired the company responsible had been inadvertently hobbling the competing AMD CPU, undeniably skewing the results. The Core i9 9900K was released, and is the fastest gaming CPU around, but its super high price means that it struggles to really make itself a worthwhile opponent for the similarly specced, and far cheaper, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. Intel 2018 review: October – DecemberIn October serial Intel-baiter Charlie Demerjian published a story claiming Intel was killing off its original 10nm node. This prompted Intel into an almost immediate response – something it generally doesn’t do – to say that there was nothing wrong with 10nm, it was all fine, and it was “making good progress.” It was then announced Intel was cutting gaming CPU supply to the DIY and system integrators over Q4, traditionally a busy time for all concerned. Again, it was all down to the 14nm shortage linked to the delay in the 10nm production process. Cut to December and Intel announces the new Sunny Cove CPU microarchitecture on a new 10nm node. This all happened at the Intel Architecture day, where Murthy Renduchintala is reported to have said Intel has “humble pie to eat right now, and we’re eating it. My view on 10nm is that brilliant engineers took a risk, and now they’re retracing their steps and getting it right.” Which does kind of suggest Intel did halt work on its previous 10nm node, making its engineers go back and try and fix the problems that got them to that stage. I mean, whatever happened to Ice Lake? Looks like the lakes are over and we’re moving into the Cove era next year. But Intel has at least finished the year on a positive note, announcing its new CPU roadmap as well as the name of its upcoming discrete GPU architecture, Intel Xe. Or Intel Xe. We’re not entirely sure which, though it’s probably pronounced the same. And is only a short hop, skip, and a jump from being called the Intel Xen as a bit of AMD Zen baiting too. Missed opportunity there… Read More Intel in 2018 – missing CEO, vanishing 10nm node, but record revenue - PCGamesN : http://bit.ly/2EN2ON4If chip giant Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) meets the financial guidance that it laid out in late October, the company will close out 2018 having delivered all-time record revenue, free cash flow, and earnings per share. For the company to generate so much revenue and profit -- its guidance calls for $71.2 billion in revenue, $15.5 billion in free cash flow, and $4.53 in non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) -- it ultimately needs to sell products that customers want to buy. Intel released a number of products in 2018, and I'd like to explain why I think this one product release stood out. Taking lots of shareIntel's XMM 7560 LTE Advanced modem represented a strong product release worthy of recognition. The chipmaker has been in the cellular modem business for a while, but it wasn't until fairly recently that this business showed signs of life for the company. Indeed, it wasn't until the second half of 2016 that the company's modem business took off -- a direct result of Apple choosing to use the company's XMM 7360 for some of its iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus devices. Apple tapped Intel again for the iPhone 8/iPhone X generation of devices, selecting the XMM 7480 modem for a portion of its then-newest iPhones. However, with the XMM 7560, Intel took a big leap forward, which allowed it to win the entirety of the 2018 iPhone modem orders. The XMM 7560 added support for the CDMA and EVDO standards, which allowed smartphones based on the modem to work on major carriers that require that. By adding this feature, Intel opened up the opportunity to grow its modem share at Apple beyond models destined for non-CDMA/EVDO networks -- which it did, capturing the entirety of Apple's 2018 iPhone modem orders. As a result, Intel's modem revenue grew by an impressive 131% last quarter. On top of that, Intel's XMM 7260, XMM 7360, and XMM 7480 modems all had baseband processors manufactured by third parties on older-generation 28-nanometer technology. The XMM 7560, on the other hand, incorporates a baseband that's not only built on a more efficient 14nm technology, but it's also Intel's own 14nm technology rather than a third-party technology. To be clear, I'm not saying that the XMM 7560 is the best modem in the market -- that's just not true, as third-party testing confirms. Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) has been shipping modems with capabilities similar to the XMM 7560 for a while, and is today selling superior modems (both in stand-alone form as well as integrated into applications processors). What I am saying is that with the XMM 7560, Intel built a product that was so dramatically better than its predecessor that Apple was able and willing to bet its entire current product cycle on it. That's a worthwhile achievement on the part of the chipmaker. What's next?After the XMM 7560, Intel is planning to introduce the XMM 7660. It's still a 4G LTE Advanced modem (Intel's 5G offering isn't slated to appear until 2020), but it promises to be a significant improvement over the XMM 7560. According to Intel, peak download speeds should rise to 1.6 gigabits per second (versus about 1 gigabit per second for the XMM 7560), and the modem supports more simultaneous bands than its predecessor (more than 45 for the XMM 7660, versus more than 35 for the XMM 7560). I expect that Apple will use the XMM 7660 for the entirety of its 2019 iPhone lineup. The magazine Fast Company recently reported that Apple plans to tap Intel exclusively for 5G modem supply for the 2020 iPhones. The longer-term outlook for Intel's stand-alone modem efforts is less clear. Indeed, The Informationrecently reported on its website that Apple -- far and away Intel's largest cellular modem customer -- is hard at work on its own 5G modem. As I said previously, if Apple were to successfully develop and deploy its own cellular-modem technology, it would be a clear negative for Intel's modem efforts. Ashraf Eassa owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Qualcomm and has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. For years, Intel has sold book-sized PCs called 'NUCs' (Next Unit of Computing). Most of these computers only have integrated Intel HD graphics, but the 'Crimson Canyon' models have discrete AMD Radeon graphics. Right now you can get a Crimson Canyon NUC for just $409.00 from Newegg—$170 below the original MSRP. The model on sale is equipped with an Intel Core i3-8121U processor, 8GB of LPDDR4 memory, a 1TB hard drive, and AMD Radeon 540 graphics with 2GB of VRAM. The limited amount of video memory means most AAA games probably won't work well, but older titles and e-sports games will be fine. Intel also includes a bundle of software and games with the NUC, including GRID Autosport, Gas Guzzlers Extreme, in-game content for World of Tanks and World of Warships, and more. NUCs are great computers if you're limited on desk space, or if you want a home theater PC. The 8th-gen Core i3 processor and 8GB RAM alone make this a pretty good deal for $410—the tiny physical size and Radeon graphics are cherries on top. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. Read More Intel's Crimson Canyon gaming NUC is just $409 at Newegg - PC Gamer : http://bit.ly/2TaeNrPIntel Corp (INTC - Free Report) has announced plans to strengthen and expand in Israel through production operations, according to a report by Reuters. In this regard, the company will receive approval from the authorities in Israel to invest $5 billion to upgrade a chip plant in Kiryat Gat. The precise amount is subject to the final approval by Intel’s Investments Center. After the upgrade, the company’s plant in Israel will be one of the most advanced chip manufacturing facilities in the world. Following the investment, the world’s largest chipmaker will be entitled to a 700 million shekel ($185 million) grant from the Israeli government. Further, Intel will have to pay a reduced tax rate of 5% until 2027 (the standard rate of company tax in Israel in 2018 was 23%). Per the deal, Intel will purchase a 2.1 billion shekels ($556 million) worth of Israeli products, according to the media report. The company also intends to hire an additional 250 workers for the Fab 28 plant. Intel’s Position in Israel Santa Clara, CA-based Intel forayed into Israel in 1974.Notably, the company already has 11,000 employees in Israel directly. Moreover, Intel’s local team now has around 1,000 employees of Mobileye. Notably, Intel's acquisition of Israel-based Mobileye, an autonomous vehicle technology provider is significantly positive in our view. The acquisition will help the company to rapidly penetrate the autonomous car technology market, currently dominated by the likes of NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) and Qualcomm (QCOM - Free Report) . With the buyout, Intel will now have access to Mobileye’s technologies related to cameras, in-car networking, sensor-chips, roadway mapping, cloud software, machine learning and data management. This will bolster its customer base going forward. Media reports indicate that Intel Israel’s exports amount to $35 billion over a period of 40 years. Bottom Line The deal holds a lot of value for both Intel and Israel. As part of the deal, the Israeli government has set certain conditions. Intel will have to increase production capacity of the renovated plant. It will also have to retain workers irrespective of how its business performs, increase the value of local buys made by the company and give preference to Israeli workers and contractors in the plant upgrade work. While Intel has not made any official announcement, the investment by the company will likely be utilized to develop its new advanced 10-nanometer (nm) chips. The deal is deemed to be the biggest investment in Israel by a foreign company. Zacks Rank & Another Stock to Consider Intel currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Another top-ranked stock in the broader technology sector includes Upland Software, Inc. (UPLD - Free Report) , sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Long-term earnings growth rate for Upland Software is currently pegged at 20%. Today's Stocks from Zacks' Hottest Strategies It's hard to believe, even for us at Zacks. But while the market gained +21.9% in 2017, our top stock-picking screens have returned +115.0%, +109.3%, +104.9%, +98.6%, and +67.1%. And this outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. Over the years it has been remarkably consistent. From 2000 - 2017, the composite yearly average gain for these strategies has beaten the market more than 19X over. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that we're willing to share their latest stocks with you without cost or obligation. Read More Intel (INTC) to Expand Production Operations in Israel - Zacks.com : http://bit.ly/2SkCKwHI screw around with charts all the time. I look at a lot of balance sheets, too. Analysis is analysis. In my opinion, any trader using either technical or fundamental analysis to the exclusion of the other, without also making any attempt to mesh macroeconomic trends and expected policy impact into one's conclusions is really not putting in the necessary work. Labor of love? Not really. More like the need to hunt and kill in order to provide. Well, last night after downing more cookies and Irish whiskey (great combo) than a man my age probably should, I saw a headline. Israel had approved a $185 million grant for Intel in return for a $5 billion expansion plan for the firm's operations in that country. Made me pull up the charts on the name. While I think I see support that could come in as high as $42, and perhaps as low as $41.50, it was the Fibonacci Time Zones that really caught my eye. Lining up the lows of 2017 as a start point, these time lines seem to turn direction, sometimes short-term, and sometimes to far more-significant effect, but they do seem to work. Guess what? The name seems to be closing in on such a line right freaking now, Tex. What This MeansI remain long some Intel (INTC) . Yes, I have repositioned myself far more defensively; but still I retain at least trace positions in many of may favorite tech names, even those exposed to China. Dry powder is not a problem, as I have publicly encouraged higher cash levels for close to 11 months now. Given (1) that headline, (2) the charts, (3) that Intel has really executed quite well (in my opinion) in the absence of a permanent CEO, (4) that interim CEO, Robert Swan, has been adding shares, and (5) that the name pays shareholders 2.75%, that gives me five reasons why this will likely be the first tech name where I start rebuilding my position, albeit slowly. Yes, I am still working my way out of Micron Technology (MU) , and still managing Nvidia (NVDA) through net-basis manipulation. This will be a process. So will be getting back in shape, physically. Will I win this one? They say that past history is no guarantee of future results. Guess I'll just have to let you know. The Trade--Position: Adding to long in small increments. --Target Price: $49, down from $52. --Panic Point: $41, down from $42. (An earlier version of this column appeared at 8.23 a.m. ET on Real Money, our premium site for active traders. Click here to get great columns like this from Stephen "Sarge" Guilfoyle, Jim Cramer and other experts throughout the market day.) Read More 5 Reasons Why Intel Is a Buy Right Now - TheStreet.com : http://bit.ly/2RfvWmS |
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January 2020
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