Intel has reported strong performance in Q1 2020. The chipmaker beat Wall Street estimates for financial performance by confirming it had generated $19.8 billion in revenue, with earnings-per-share (EPS) of $1.31. This represents a year-on-year uplift of 23 per cent and 51 per cent, respectively. The results show that the tech industry is "more essential now than it has ever been," noted Bob Swan, Intel CEO - obviously giving reference to the Covid-19 pandemic.
I've shared the key headline figures for the overall business in the intro and above we can look closer at how Intel's mix of products are doing via the Business Unit Summary. You can see that the Data-centric business did best with an overall uplift in revenue of 34 per cent YoY. Meanwhile, the PC-centric Client Computing Group (CCG), often characterised as being 'troubled' enjoyed a revenue uplift of 14 per cent YoY.
Intel noted that despite Covid-19 its essential factory operations met 90 per cent of deliver targets. On the topic of the pandemic, Intel has started to implement a measured response; supporting employees with a $100m investment, pledging $60m of Intel technology to relief efforts, joined the Open Covid Pledge for scientific research, and donated a million PPE items to healthcare workers.
Understandably Intel was rather pleased with the Data-centric business results. The Data-centric Data Center Group (DCG) with revenue up 43 percent was the star of that show, bringing in $7bn in revenue in the latest quarter. In percentage terms Intel's memory business did even better, with a 46 per cent gain. But this is a small business, generating $1.3bn during Q1. Mobileye automotive systems did pretty good too, thanks to increasing ADAS adoption.
Moving onto CCG, you can see above that laptop sales are the driving force behind gains here. However, while the laptop component average selling price (ASP) is down, desktop ASPs prices are up - with people buying into more expensive Intel CPU lines.
Above you can see Intel is pretty proud of its performance, despite Covid-19 impacts. It highlights that it launched the 10th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors, including a new processor "delivering desktop-calibre performance that gamers and creators can take anywhere" (which boosts to 5.3GHz).
Last but not least you can see Intel is committed to releasing its first 10nm+ Tiger Lake (TGL) CPUs in mid 2020. In the post-results conference call Intel indicated that it had 40 per cent more design wins for TGL when it was at the same stage of development as Ice Lake.
