Intel Says It's Steady As She Goes For Third Quarter
Even so, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company last week narrowed its expected range of revenue for the current quarter. Previously, it had told analysts to expect sales of between $9.6 billion and $10.2 billion for the period. Now the company expects sales of between $9.8 billion and $10 billion.
Executives said brisk sales of the company&s notebook products continues to push it into double-digit, year-over year growth. The news did not comes as a surprise to some in the channel, where business in many quarters is being described as seasonal.
“It&s basically been a very, very typical year,” said Mike Zabaneh, COO of Tangent Computer, a Burlingame, Calif.-based system builder and Intel partner. He said that much of Tangent&s government and education accounts have been showing steady orders, including schools buying technology for the back-to-school runup.
“There wasn&t extra money,” Zabaneh said. “There wasn&t less money.” He said he has seen no tail-off in business as a result of rising energy prices. Intel executives said the company is seeing steady results from all geographies.
“We continue to see healthy growth worldwide,” said Andy Bryant, Intel&s CFO, in a conference call with financial analysts. He said Intel is on track for 16 percent to 18 percent growth for the quarter.
“Our outlook anticipates a quarter in line with our expectations, and a little better than seasonal,” Bryant said.
The continued market transition to notebook-based computing, and adoption of Intel&s Centrino platform, was helping the company in what would otherwise be a market with pricing pressure.
“It&s just that a [notebook] transition is happening gradually enough, and there is enough extra benefit in the notebook space that we are able to do better than we otherwise might expect,” Bryant said.
Bryant provided few other details on what was driving the company&s sales during the quarter, which would keep Intel on a double-digit growth rate for the full year if it tracks through to Oct. 1, the end of the company&s third quarter.