Urgent search for an Intel savior

Update: Third-generation ultrabooks may be able to achieve 40% of notebook shipments, say players [DIGITIMES, Dec 11, 2012]

As Intel failed to achieve its goal of having ultrabooks account for 40% of total notebook shipments with its Ivy Bridge platform, and the proportion only reached about 10%, sources from notebook players believe the goal may be achievable with the upcoming Haswell platform, which is set to launch at the end of second-quarter, 2013.

The sources pointed out that compared to Ivy Bridge, Haswell’s stronger performance and cheaper price, plus the expectation that Windows 8 should become more standardized by then, should mean ultrabooks have a chance to account for 40% of total notebook shipments by the end of 2013.

Although vendors have released ultra-like notebooks with prices around US$699-899 as alternatives, since these devices lack attractiveness in terms of design and weight, while ultrabook models with specifications similar to the MacBook Air have prices a lot higher than the MacBook Air, most consumers have turned to purchase Apple’s product instead, the sources noted.

Chips are down for Intel’s CEO [Euronews YouTube channel, Nov 19, 2012]

The head of the computer chip giant Intel is to retire next year. Paul Ottelini has been CEO since 2005. The company that dominates personal computers has been struggling recently, mainly due to the consumer’s new love-affair with smart-phones and tablets, technology where Britain’s ARM Holdings is king. Intel, which is known for finding chief execs from within the company, said they would also consider external candidates.

After what I’ve described in Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [Nov 13, 2012], Intel Haswell: “Mobile computing is not limited to tiny, low-performing devices” [Nov 15, 2012] and Boosting both the commodity and premium brand markets in 2013 with much more smartphones and tablets while the Windows notebook shipments will shrink by 2% [Nov 20, 2012] the news that Intel has an urgent need to find a new CEO is not a surprise for me at all.

Quite obviously Intel’s long-time business model suddenly looks like as unsustainable for the year 2013 (which also happens to be its fiscal year) not only for me as:
From: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May [Intel press release, Nov 19, 2012]

… Paul Otellini, has decided to retire as an officer and director at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting in May, starting an orderly leadership transition over the next six months. …

The board of directors will conduct the process to choose Otellini’s successor and will consider internal and external candidates for the job.

In addition, the company also announced that the board has approved the promotion of three senior leaders to the position of executive vice president: Renee James, head of Intel’s software business; Brian Krzanich, chief operating officer and head of worldwide manufacturing; and Stacy Smith, chief financial officer and director of corporate strategy.

From: Intel Corporation Hoped Otellini Would Stay Another Year As CEO [ValueWalk, Nov 20, 2012]

Andy Bryant, chairman of the board of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) hoped Paul Otellini could stay one more year as chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. During an Interview with Barron’s yesterday, Bryant admitted that he was surprised last week when Otellini  told him that he will retire by May next year.

“I did everything I can think of to buy myself another year [of Otellini’s leaderhip]. We were targeting further out for this,” said Bryant.

…

During the interview with Barron’s, Bryant said the mobile market is still a big challenge for the company. According to him,”After almost 40 years at Intel, and the Intel CEO job for 8 years, which is a really hard job, he felt it was time to move to the next generation of leadership. We do have big issues in front of us, moving to the tablet and phone markets, and he was ready to let the next generation lead those battles.”

…

According to him, finding a replacement for Otellini is another challenge. Intel will search for the next CEO inside and outside the company. He is considering five senior executives as candidates for the position, including Renee James, the head of software; Brian Krzanich, head of manufacturing; Stacy Smith, chief financial officer; Dadi Perlmutter, head of mobile efforts; and Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital.

Ambrish Srivastava, PhD, an analyst at BMO, said it is interesting to know that Intel is willing to hire a CEO outside the company, since the company has a deep rooted internal culture, few came from outside and succeeded.

There was an immediate negative response on the stock market showing that even without any meaningful explanations given by either board or Otellini himself the outlook for Intel turned into a one with less expectations about future performance:

And this was only “due to uncertainty with the CEO transition” as was explained by UBS after Intel was downgraded from a “Buy” to “Neutral” by it. 

There is nevertheless much more behind of this sudden change, as even Intel’s Q3 report had a few question marks hanging in the air, more notably:
From: CFO Commentary on Third-Quarter 2012 Results [Intel, Oct 16, 2012]

Q4 2012 Outlook

…

Revenue

Revenue is expected to be $13.6B, plus or minus $500M in the fourth quarter. The midpoint of this range would be an increase of 1% from the third quarter. This slight increase in revenue in the fourth quarter reflects the caution we are seeing in the order patterns of our customers as a result of concerns about the global economic environment, ongoing consumer softness in mature markets, and a slowing enterprise market segment.

Gross Margin

Gross margin in the fourth quarter is expected to be 57%, plus or minus a couple points, down 6.3 points from the third quarter. In response to the reductions in our demand forecast we are significantly reducing factory loadings in the fourth quarter, resulting in a forecast of approximately $500M in underutilization charges.

Related information from: Intel Corporation’s CEO Discusses Q3 2012 Results – Earnings Call Transcript [Oct 16, 2012]

JoAnne Feeney – Longbow Research

And then as a follow-up, Stacy could you let us know what happened with units versus ASPs in PCs versus servers last quarter?

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

Yeah, it’s actually in the CFO commentary JoAnne, but in general we saw PC units up 1% versus the prior quarter and datacenter units were also up 1%. This is a quarter-on-quarter compare.

JoAnne Feeney – Longbow Research

Sorry, and the ASPs?

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

The PC ASPs were down 1% and the server ASPs were down 7% based on the mix kind of things that I have been talking about.

And in the Q&A part of that call Otellini himself said that:

… we do believe that when the numbers are all in, the PC consumption did grow in Q3 at about half the normal seasonal rate and will also grow in Q4 about half the normal seasonal rate. How much of that happening is macroeconomic versus the timing of the Windows 8 builds and the share of wallet, war for tablets versus PCs is TBD, and we’ll know a lot more about that 90 days from now after the Windows 8 launch, after we see Intel based tablets start shipping, when people start playing with the operating system and have all the touch based Ultrabooks out there. We’ll know a lot more. So we’ll try to quantify that a bit more for you in 90 days, but right now it’s a bit of each. …

… I was just in China a week and a half ago, so there is a fairly current view. I see the same situation. China as a manufacturing center is reflecting the comments that we had in our commentary which is that the OEMs are being very cautious with their inventory comments at this point in time for all the reasons we’ve discussed and it’s as lean as we’ve seen it in normal times without the shortage of let’s say their hard drives of last year.

In terms of the channel inventory, there really isn’t very much. I went into Tier 3 city, you don’t see things stocked up or sacked up on pallet and stuff. People are generally — I think most of our customers worldwide spent a lot of Q3 thinning out their Windows 7 inventory, so they wouldn’t have an overhang at the launch. And that accounts for a lot of this inventory shipped of our billings versus the consumption that we’ve been talking about. And now with the launch of Windows 8 coming in a week or so, you’ll see a new round of build and hopefully consumption.

…

In terms of demand stimulation, a lot of what we are doing is really to make sure that the feature set of this season’s Ultrabooks are really consistent with where the market is, that’s why we’ve been so focused on working with our customers and the ecosystem just, for example, bring the touch SKUs in. So six to eight months ago that we did not have line of sight to 40 out of a 140 SKUs of Ultrabooks being touch enabled, it was probably five or 10; we are up to 40 now, and that’s just going to get bigger as we go into 2013. So working with the vendors and the glass manufacturers to bring the cost of touch as an increment down has been one of the key things we think we can do to drive demand.

…

The inventory, I thing is straight forward. The work-in-process and finished goods that we’re expecting to come down over this quarter are our Ivy Bridge products which is the mainstream high-end product we have today. And as the market picks up, Windows 8 launches, Ultrabooks pick up and so forth then that just consumes that inventory. And as I said earlier, in my comments and Stacy’s, our OEMs are running very lean right now. So any kind of demand blip would cause us to be able to reduce that even more perhaps.

In terms of the mix, there is really not much more to add than we put in our pre-release and in the comments today which is that the U.S. and Western Europe PC markets remained soft in terms of consumers. The change that we have seen and we talked about at the pre-announcement was that the enterprise PC market has gone relatively flat now and I think that’s just a reflection of large corporations making hard decisions on CapEx versus people, and where they want to put their investments and now that seems to have spilled over from the client side of the enterprise also the data center server part of the enterprise. And you know I think we will see how that sorts out over the next quarter or so as CEOs and CIOs make their next round of decisions.

In terms of China, the slowdown there was – it’s principally a notebook business and the slowdown there was in consumer notebooks.

…

China is in their own macroeconomic cycle slowing down, I mean the GDP forecast for the year have come down for next have come down. There is also a reasonable amount of anxiety around the change in government and that tends to put a little bit of nervousness into the system and what I don’t know is how much of that clarifies after they change, because it’s not so much they don’t know who is coming in. The issue is what are the policies, in terms of stimulus and taxation and so forth. They have been pretty generous the last year or so, a year or two rather, in terms of stimulating domestic consumption and the question is will those polices continue or not.

…

This earlier information given by Otellini himself and the current “supply chain” point of view collected in my post Boosting both the commodity and premium brand markets in 2013 with much more smartphones and tablets while the Windows notebook shipments will shrink by 2% [Nov 20, 2012] are definitely pointing to the following true reasons behind Otellini’s sudden departure, as reported by just very few media sources only:
– Otellini Exits Intel, With Windows 8 Fate Uncertain [InformationWeek, Nov 20, 2012]
– Intel chief logs off as rest of the world leaves PCs behind [The Times, Nov 20, 2012]
– ‘Old hands lack skills to lead Intel into mobile age’ [Bloomberg via BusinessReport, Nov 21, 2012]
– Intel CEO Paul Otellini to leave company in major shake-up [Computeractive, Nov 20, 2012]

And here is a quite sarcastic but also quite true reporting:
– While the Intel board was firing Paul Otellini they should have fired themselves, too [Cringely on technology, Nov 20, 2012]

So in reality it is an absolutely inevitable thing what is going now with Intel. Here is the only video comment properly reflecting that:
– Intel Could Use CEO With Mobile Skills, Wang Says [Bloomberg YouTube channel, Nov 20, 2012]

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) — Patrick Wang, an analyst at Evercore Partners Inc., talks about Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini’s plan to retire in May and the outlook for his replacement. Wang speaks with Jon Erlichman, Pimm Fox and Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg)

 

Background information in the full:

Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May [Intel press release, Nov 19, 2012]

Intel Corporation today announced that the company’s president and CEO, Paul Otellini, has decided to retire as an officer and director at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting in May, starting an orderly leadership transition over the next six months. Otellini’s decision to retire will bring to a close a remarkable career of nearly 40 years of continuous service to the company and its stockholders.

“Paul Otellini has been a very strong leader, only the fifth CEO in the company’s great 45-year history, and one who has managed the company through challenging times and market transitions,” said Andy Bryant, chairman of the board. “The board is grateful for his innumerable contributions to the company and his distinguished tenure as CEO over the last eight years.”

“I’ve been privileged to lead one of the world’s greatest companies,” Otellini said. “After almost four decades with the company and eight years as CEO, it’s time to move on and transfer Intel’s helm to a new generation of leadership. I look forward to working with Andy, the board and the management team during the six-month transition period, and to being available as an advisor to management after retiring as CEO.”

The board of directors will conduct the process to choose Otellini’s successor and will consider internal and external candidates for the job.

In addition, the company also announced that the board has approved the promotion of three senior leaders to the position of executive vice president: Renee James, head of Intel’s software business; Brian Krzanich, chief operating officer and head of worldwide manufacturing; and Stacy Smith, chief financial officer and director of corporate strategy.

During Otellini’s tenure as CEO — from the second quarter of 2005 through the third quarter of 2012 — Intel:

• Generated cash from operations of $107 billion
• Made $23.5 billion in dividend payments
• Increased the quarterly dividend 181 percent from $0.08 to $0.225

From the end of 2005 through the end of 2011, Intel achieved record revenue and net income. During this period, annual revenue grew from $38.8 billion to $54 billion, while annual earnings-per-share grew from $1.40 to $2.39.

In addition to financial performance, Intel, under Otellini’s leadership, achieved notable successes in areas of strategic importance. During this period, the company:

• Transformed operations and the cost structure for long-term growth
• Achieved breakthrough innovations, including High-K/Metal gate and now 3-D Tri-gate transistors; and dramatic improvement in energy efficiency of Intel processors
• Reinvented the PC with Ultrabook™ devices
• Greatly expanded business partnerships and made strategic acquisitions that expanded Intel’s presence in security, software and mobile communications
• Delivered the first smartphones and tablets for sale with Intel inside
• Grew the vast network of cloud-based computing built on Intel products

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available atnewsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.

Intel, the Intel logo and Ultrabook are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Intel Corporation’s CEO Discusses Q3 2012 Results – Earnings Call Transcript [Oct 16, 2012]

…

In the coming months consumers will see tremendous form factor and industrial design innovation. There will be more than 140 Core based Ultrabooks, more than 40 of which will have touch. This will include more than a dozen convertibles that combine the productivity of the laptop with the convenience of a tablet.

Many of the Ultrabook SKUs will hit the mainstream $699 price point with some Burst SKUs well below even that number. Q4 will see more than 20 Atom based tablets from six or more leading OEMs using Clover Trail. Clover Trail is a brand new SoC that will enable tablets as thin as 8.5 millimeters and as light as 1.5 pounds.

With three weeks of connected standby battery life and all of the compatibility that Windows users and Intel customers have come to expect, I am excited about the these products and the capabilities they bring to consumers and the enterprise.

Last month at IDF, we shared details of our next-generation Core processor codenamed Haswell. Originally targeted at 15 watts, we have made significant advancements in micro-architecture and process technology that will allow us to move Haswell down into the 10 watt envelope fostering even more innovation in form factor as well as new usage models like gesture computing and voice recognition.

…

John Pitzer – Credit Suisse

Paul, how do you assess how much of what’s going on in the PC market right now; is macro, timing of Windows 8 versus kind of the more structural bearish view that tablets and smartphones are just plain and simple eating into PC TAM. How do you think about those dynamics?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

I think it’s a bit of each and I would be reticent to quantify it John. Clearly, we saw a softening in the consumer segments. We talked about that when we did the pre-announcement about a month ago and the surprise there was that China which had been very strong in those current week on us on top of continuing weakness in the mature markets of U.S. and Western Europe.

However, having said that, we do believe that when the numbers are all in, the PC consumption did grow in Q3 at about half the normal seasonal rate and will also grow in Q4 about half the normal seasonal rate. How much of that happening is macroeconomic versus the timing of the Windows 8 builds and the share of wallet, war for tablets versus PCs is TBD, and we’ll know a lot more about that 90 days from now after the Windows 8 launch, after we see Intel based tablets start shipping, when people start playing with the operating system and have all the touch based Ultrabooks out there. We’ll know a lot more. So we’ll try to quantify that a bit more for you in 90 days, but right now it’s a bit of each.

…

David Wong – Wells Fargo

Thanks very much. You commented on Clover Trail tablet; are you seeing many Ivy Bridge tablet designs in addition to the Microsoft Surface and can you give us some idea of how many tablet makers you are currently working with on Haswell tablets for the future?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

I can help you on the former, not the latter. On Ivy Bridge, you know, there is, I would say, a handful, five to eight, something like that that I’ve seen off the top of my head. And for Haswell, it’s too soon to tell, I mean we have, when you start seeing an Ultrabook with a detachable touch screen, is it a tablet and it’s based on Haswell, so the tablet is an Ultrabook or is it a convertible, you know, I don’t know; lots of inventive names for these things as we go along. What I can tell you is that the level of innovation there is really unbounded; I haven’t seen this in a long time.

But, I think in terms of, just little bit near term selling season, there are some Ivy Bridge ones. They tend to be skewed more towards to the enterprise, where our customers believe that their customers, the CIOs of the world want a high performance tablet that is compatible, that is secure and that runs all their enterprise software. So I think that’s where you’ll see those migrate versus I think Clover Trail stuff which was going to be a bit more consumer centric.

David Wong – Wells Fargo

Great. And, you said you expect to qualify Haswell in the March quarter, will Haswell be appearing in systems in the March quarter or should we look for that a bit later in the year?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

The first half.

Christopher Danely – JPMorgan

Thanks guys. So Paul can you just give us maybe just your take on what you think is going to take to pull the PC industry out of this slunk? And do you think that with the advent of tablets cannibalizing notebooks that we’re never going to see the growth in PCs we used to; is it going to be something lower than what we have been used to?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

Again, since we don’t know how much of the flatness that we’re seeing this year in PCs as a function of which of those variables that we talked about earlier, it’s pretty hard to say that in good economic cycles that we wouldn’t return to normal growth. But, what I get back to as I lookout here, I don’t think and I said this to you guys before, I don’t think that the tablet as we’ve seen it evolve over the last several years is the end state of computing.

The innovation is going to start pouring in now that you have widely available SKUs on a widely distributed operating system that will come from multiple vendors that can unleash their creativity. And, what I can’t predict is what form factor is going to win here, but I do think that some of these things that have sort of the best of both worlds, the performance and the capability of a laptop and the form factor and convenience of a tablet, are likely to be the things that are most high volumes earners, but we honestly won’t know for 12 months.

…

CJ Muse – Barclays

Yeah, thank you for taking my question. I guess just as a follow-up on the inventory side. Can you discuss what you have seen downstream particularly in China and then also as part of the healthy days, my math suggest exiting December at roughly 75 days. Is that kind of the new normal we should think about for you guys in a lower PC growth rate environment or do you think that you need to be some thing lower?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

Let me try the China one CJ, and Stacy will come to the inventory.

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

And I’ll do the second. Yeah.

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

I was just in China a week and a half ago, so there is a fairly current view. I see the same situation. China as a manufacturing center is reflecting the comments that we had in our commentary which is that the OEMs are being very cautious with their inventory comments at this point in time for all the reasons we’ve discussed and it’s as lean as we’ve seen it in normal times without the shortage of let’s say their hard drives of last year.

In terms of the channel inventory, there really isn’t very much. I went into Tier 3 city, you don’t see things stocked up or sacked up on pallet and stuff. People are generally — I think most of our customers worldwide spent a lot of Q3 thinning out their Windows 7 inventory, so they wouldn’t have an overhang at the launch. And that accounts for a lot of this inventory shipped of our billings versus the consumption that we’ve been talking about. And now with the launch of Windows 8 coming in a week or so, you’ll see a new round of build and hopefully consumption.

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

Yeah and in terms of the inventory targets, the number you threw out is in the 70s is where we’re planning to get to in Q4. Just to put that in perspective maybe two other comments on what we’re doing. One is we are taking down utilization in the factories down to sub 50%, again to take inventory out and free up the opportunity to move both space and equipment and redirect that to 14-nanometer. So it’s a pretty significant series of actions. And I also want to point to the inventory that we have in place while it’s in terms of units more than I want to hold. It’s on the order of 70% Ivy Bridge, so it’s our freshest stuff. I am not worried about the salability of the inventory, but I do want to bring the Ivy Bridge inventory levels down. It’s just healthy for us to have less.

…

Daniel Berenbaum – MKM Partners

When you talk about clearing inventory, does pricing come into play in any fashion on the PC, just talk about pricing a little bit on the Data Center side, clearing inventory on either the consumer side or the enterprise side, is that helping? And then follow-up also a little bit on an earlier question, is there anything else that Intel can be doing to spur demand? We’ve already seen sort of Microsoft take matters a bit into their own hands with some of the designs that they are trying to sell; is pricing help you spur demand or is there something else that you can do?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

The short answer to your question is no on pricing. We do forward pricing with our customers. It’s priced I think aggressively to move into the mainstream price points in terms of the stuff I talked about. If you look at our PC group numbers quarter-over-quarter, the ASP was about flat year-over-year. It was down a bit, mobile was down a bit. What that reflects was really us going after some incremental share at the bottom of the market, so didn’t really change pricing but it changed the mix, and we thought it was time we could do some of that and we did it opportunistically. That’s more the driver on that side.

In terms of demand stimulation, a lot of what we are doing is really to make sure that the feature set of this season’s Ultrabooks are really consistent with where the market is, that’s why we’ve been so focused on working with our customers and the ecosystem just, for example, bring the touch SKUs in. So six to eight months ago that we did not have line of sight to 40 out of a 140 SKUs of Ultrabooks being touch enabled, it was probably five or 10; we are up to 40 now, and that’s just going to get bigger as we go into 2013. So working with the vendors and the glass manufacturers to bring the cost of touch as an increment down has been one of the key things we think we can do to drive demand.

Daniel Berenbaum – MKM Partners

And related to pricing, you’ve obviously got a wounded competitor out there now. Are you seeing that competitor get aggressive on pricing, especially in this environment? Your competitor talked about a big inventory write-down in its negative preannouncement; are you seeing lower pricing there and is that in any way impacting you?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

I think you would have to ask them their strategy for pricing. As Paul said, we had last quarter and this quarter, we believe, we’ve won some share at the lower end of the market; that’s our strategy here. So you’ve got to ask them the question about their pricing strategy.

…

JoAnne Feeney – Longbow Research

Yeah, I was hoping you can elaborate a little bit more on what you are seeing and what you saw last quarter and what you expect this quarter in terms of the mix of demand, both across consumer and enterprise geographically and then PC, you know, notebooks, desktops; just some more color if you would on what kind of mix you are seeing out there and where you expect it to go and what you’re relying on to get those inventories clear say by the beginning of 2013?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

Well, let me start with the last part. The inventory, I thing is straight forward. The work-in-process and finished goods that we’re expecting to come down over this quarter are our Ivy Bridge products which is the mainstream high-end product we have today. And as the market picks up, Windows 8 launches, Ultrabooks pick up and so forth then that just consumes that inventory. And as I said earlier, in my comments and Stacy’s, our OEMs are running very lean right now. So any kind of demand blip would cause us to be able to reduce that even more perhaps.

In terms of the mix, there is really not much more to add than we put in our pre-release and in the comments today which is that the U.S. and Western Europe PC markets remained soft in terms of consumers. The change that we have seen and we talked about at the pre-announcement was that the enterprise PC market has gone relatively flat now and I think that’s just a reflection of large corporations making hard decisions on CapEx versus people, and where they want to put their investments and now that seems to have spilled over from the client side of the enterprise also the data center server part of the enterprise. And you know I think we will see how that sorts out over the next quarter or so as CEOs and CIOs make their next round of decisions.

In terms of China, the slowdown there was – it’s principally a notebook business and the slowdown there was in consumer notebooks.

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

And I’ll just add in the DCG, we saw strength in the Cloud customers and over the course of the quarter weakening in the large enterprise purchases of server chips. So the mix there was more towards the Cloud.

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

Mix had been strong in the first half.

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

Mix had been strong in the first half, yeah.

JoAnne Feeney – Longbow Research

And then as a follow-up, Stacy could you let us know what happened with units versus ASPs in PCs versus servers last quarter?

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

Yeah, it’s actually in the CFO commentary JoAnne, but in general we saw PC units up 1% versus the prior quarter and datacenter units were also up 1%. This is a quarter-on-quarter compare.

JoAnne Feeney – Longbow Research

Sorry, and the ASPs?

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

The PC ASPs were down 1% and the server ASPs were down 7% based on the mix kind of things that I have been talking about.

Patrick Wang – Evercore Partners

Great, thanks so much. First question, I want to see if we can go back to China and Paul may be kind of recap some of the feedback you are hearing from those meetings you did have, because it seems like the slowdown in China is really impacting global PC demand and weakness out there. So just curious what the latest you are hearing?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

Well, what I don’t know is how much of this is and China is in their own macroeconomic cycle slowing down, I mean the GDP forecast for the year have come down for next have come down. There is also a reasonable amount of anxiety around the change in government and that tends to put a little bit of nervousness into the system and what I don’t know is how much of that clarifies after they change, because it’s not so much they don’t know who is coming in. The issue is what are the policies, in terms of stimulus and taxation and so forth. They have been pretty generous the last year or so, a year or two rather, in terms of stimulating domestic consumption and the question is will those polices continue or not.

Patrick Wang – Evercore Partners

I want to talk quickly about Data Center. The trend that we’re seeing in ASPs right now are down since the last quarter; I am just kind of curious how you see that over the next couple of years, because when we take a lot at your Cloud segment, you’re forecasting pretty robust growth there. You talked about 50% growth last quarter. As that continues to really outstrip growth from your more traditional server customers, what kind of impact does that do to your blended ASPs?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

Well, I think the better comparison for us the Data Center is year-on-year, for which the ASP was up a bit, up 1%. The down a bit was really a big shift in the mix between what would be normal enterprise growth and of slowing in the enterprise growth. In general, for storage, for networking and I think for some aspects of the internet data center the mix was actually quite good. Sometimes they – two way machines versus four way machines, but they tend to be fairly high mix and one of the fastest growing elements of the business is high performance computing which buyers buys at the top of the line of our skews. As those product lines get flushed out more and more, I really don’t see the mix shifting away from where it’s been in the first half of this year; I see the current mix being a bit of an anomaly as a result of the softness of corporate datacenter server purchases.

Glen Yeung – Citi

Stacy, maybe the first question for you. As you sort of think about your capacity for 2013 and you are obviously taking action now, what kind of PC environment are you notionally targeting and maybe just in up or down is sufficient unless you want to be more specific?

Stacy Smith – SVP, CFO & Director, Corporate Strategy

Yeah, I am going to be less specific. If you wanted the other, yeah either up or down; hold off on triangulating on a capital forecast or on a unit growth until we get to next quarter. The CapEx number as I said is going to be really be dependent on where we think unit growth is in ‘13 and ‘14 and right now we’re fighting through Q4. There is a lack of visibility on the current quarter; I want to have the 90 days to really think about what we want to put in place.

Glen Yeung – Citi

And then Paul maybe next question for you. Notionally, we won’t expect to see when we have an operating transition like we’re seeing a spark to PC demand and yet we don’t seem to be seeing that and I wonder if you could just give us your thoughts as to why you think this time that’s not happening?

Paul Otellini – President & CEO

Yeah, I don’t think, we know it’s not happening yet. I am very excited about this new operating system. As I said earlier, it brings touch into the mainstream for the first time and we know that in the last couple of years the tablets have changed the paradigm for people to use computers, they like touch, they like to make the photos get larger with their fingers and everything else is good about that. And so I think we haven’t had a chance to really judge how the consumers will embrace this in the mainstream PC space or not.

I am very optimistic as we’ve been playing with these things and we see the products being built and we take them out for testing to consumer and we’ve now on test on Windows 8, touch enabled Ultrabooks in number of the major cities around the world, across multiple demographics. The feedback is universally positive. So I think we’re just too soon to tell. The designs aren’t even launched yet and we’ll know a lot more about this 90 days from now.

…

Intel Reports Third-Quarter Revenue of $13.5 Billion [Intel press release, Oct 16, 2012]

Intel Corporation today reported quarterly revenue of $13.5 billion, operating income of $3.8 billion, net income of $3.0 billion and EPS of $0.58. The company generated approximately $5.1 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $1.1 billion and used $1.2 billion to repurchase stock.

Our third-quarter results reflected a continuing tough economic environment,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. “The world of computing is in the midst of a period of breakthrough innovation and creativity. As we look to the fourth quarter, we’re pleased with the continued progress in Ultrabooks and phones and excited about the range of Intel-based tablets coming to market.”

Q3 2012 Key Financial Information and Business Unit Trends (GAAP, unless otherwise stated)

• PC Client Group revenue of $8.6 billion, flat sequentially and down 8 percent year-over-year
• Data Center Group revenue of $2.7 billion, down 5 percent sequentially and up 6 percent year-over-year
• Other Intel® architecture group revenue of $1.2 billion, up 6 percent sequentially and down 14 percent year-over-year
• Gross margin of 63.3 percent, 1.3 percentage points above the midpoint of the company’s updated expectation of 62 percent.
• R&D plus MG&A spending $4.6 billion, unchanged.
• Tax rate of 24 percent, below the company’s expectation of approximately 28 percent.

Business Outlook

Intel’s Business Outlook does not include the potential impact of any business combinations, asset acquisitions, divestitures or other investments that may be completed after Oct. 16.

Q4 2012 (GAAP, unless otherwise stated)

• Revenue: $13.6 billion, plus or minus $500 million.
• Gross margin percentage: 57 percent and 58 percent Non-GAAP (excluding amortization of acquisition-related intangibles), both plus or minus a couple of percentage points.
• R&D plus MG&A spending: approximately $4.5 billion.
• Amortization of acquisition-related intangibles: approximately $75 million.
• Impact of equity investments and interest and other: approximately $75 million.
• Depreciation: approximately $1.6 billion.
• Tax Rate: approximately 27 percent.
• Full-year capital spending: $11.3 billion, plus or minus $300 million.

For additional information regarding Intel’s results and Business Outlook, please see the CFO commentary at:www.intc.com/results.cfm.

Status of Business Outlook

Intel’s Business Outlook is posted on intc.com and may be reiterated in public or private meetings with investors and others. The Business Outlook will be effective through the close of business Dec. 14 unless earlier updated; except that the Business Outlook for amortization of acquisition-related intangibles, impact of equity investments and interest and other, and tax rate, will be effective only through the close of business on Oct. 23. Intel’s Quiet Period will start from the close of business on Dec. 14 until publication of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release, scheduled for Jan. 17, 2013. During the Quiet Period, all of the Business Outlook and other forward-looking statements disclosed in the company’s news releases and filings with the SEC should be considered as historical, speaking as of prior to the Quiet Period only and not subject to an update by the company.

Risk Factors

The above statements and any others in this document that refer to plans and expectations for the fourth quarter, the year and the future are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Words such as “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “may,” “will,” “should” and their variations identify forward-looking statements. Statements that refer to or are based on projections, uncertain events or assumptions also identify forward-looking statements. Many factors could affect Intel’s actual results, and variances from Intel’s current expectations regarding such factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Intel presently considers the following to be the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company’s expectations.

• Demand could be different from Intel’s expectations due to factors including changes in business and economic conditions, including supply constraints and other disruptions affecting customers; customer acceptance of Intel’s and competitors’ products; changes in customer order patterns including order cancellations; and changes in the level of inventory at customers. Uncertainty in global economic and financial conditions poses a risk that consumers and businesses may defer purchases in response to negative financial events, which could negatively affect product demand and other related matters.
• Intel operates in intensely competitive industries that are characterized by a high percentage of costs that are fixed or difficult to reduce in the short term and product demand that is highly variable and difficult to forecast. Revenue and the gross margin percentage are affected by the timing of Intel product introductions and the demand for and market acceptance of Intel’s products; actions taken by Intel’s competitors, including product offerings and introductions, marketing programs and pricing pressures and Intel’s response to such actions; and Intel’s ability to respond quickly to technological developments and to incorporate new features into its products.
• The gross margin percentage could vary significantly from expectations based on capacity utilization; variations in inventory valuation, including variations related to the timing of qualifying products for sale; changes in revenue levels; segment product mix; the timing and execution of the manufacturing ramp and associated costs; start-up costs; excess or obsolete inventory; changes in unit costs; defects or disruptions in the supply of materials or resources; product manufacturing quality/yields; and impairments of long-lived assets, including manufacturing, assembly/test and intangible assets.
• The tax rate expectation is based on current tax law and current expected income. The tax rate may be affected by the jurisdictions in which profits are determined to be earned and taxed; changes in the estimates of credits, benefits and deductions; the resolution of issues arising from tax audits with various tax authorities, including payment of interest and penalties; and the ability to realize deferred tax assets.
• Gains or losses from equity securities and interest and other could vary from expectations depending on gains or losses on the sale, exchange, change in the fair value or impairments of debt and equity investments; interest rates; cash balances; and changes in fair value of derivative instruments. The majority of our marketable equity security portfolio balance is concentrated in ASML Holding, N.V, and declines in value could result in impairment charges, impacting gains or losses on equity securities.
• Intel’s results could be affected by adverse economic, social, political and physical/infrastructure conditions in countries where Intel, its customers or its suppliers operate, including military conflict and other security risks, natural disasters, infrastructure disruptions, health concerns and fluctuations in currency exchange rates.
• Expenses, particularly certain marketing and compensation expenses, as well as restructuring and asset impairment charges, vary depending on the level of demand for Intel’s products and the level of revenue and profits.
• Intel’s results could be affected by the timing of closing of acquisitions and divestitures.
• Intel’s results could be affected by adverse effects associated with product defects and errata (deviations from published specifications), and by litigation or regulatory matters involving intellectual property, stockholder, consumer, antitrust, disclosure and other issues, such as the litigation and regulatory matters described in Intel’s SEC reports. An unfavorable ruling could include monetary damages or an injunction prohibiting Intel from manufacturing or selling one or more products, precluding particular business practices, impacting Intel’s ability to design its products, or requiring other remedies such as compulsory licensing of intellectual property.

  Earnings Webcast

  Intel will hold a public webcast at 2 p.m. PDT today on its Investor Relations website at www.intc.com. A webcast replay and MP3 download will also be available on the site.

  Intel plans to report its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012 on Jan. 17, 2013. Immediately following the earnings report, the company plans to publish a commentary by Stacy J. Smith, senior vice president and chief financial officer, atwww.intc.com/results.cfm. A public webcast of Intel’s earnings conference call will follow at 2 p.m. PDT at www.intc.com.