Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, with U.S. President Joe Biden (not pictured), announces the tech firm’s plan to build a $20 billion plant in Ohio, from the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, January 21, 2022.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Intel reported first-quarter results on Wednesday that showed a staggering 133% annual reduction in earnings per share. Revenue dropped nearly 36% year-over-year to $11.7 billion.
Still, the loss per share and sales were slightly better than soft Wall Street expectations. The stock fell about 2% in extended trading after initially rising on the report.
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Here’s how Intel did versus Refinitiv consensus expectations:
Loss per share: Loss of $0.04 per share, adjusted, versus a loss of 15 cents per share expected
Revenue: $11.7 billion, adjusted, versus $11.04 billion expected
Intel’s guidance for the current quarter of about $12 billion in revenue and a 4 cent loss per share came up short versus analyst expectations of $0.01 in earnings per share on $11.75 billion in sales.
Intel recorded a net loss of $2.8 billion, compared with a profit of $8.1 billion last year. GAAP revenue decreased to $11.7 billion from $18.4 billion. It’s the fifth consecutive quarter of falling sales for the semiconductor giant and the second consecutive quarter of losses.
It’s also the largest quarterly Intel loss of all time, beating out the fourth quarter of 2017, where Intel reported a loss of $687 million.
Intel reports adjusted earnings and revenue, excluding a bunch of items including inventory restructuring, a recent change to employee stock options, and other acquisition-related charges.
As CEO Patrick Gelsinger enters his third year at the helm of the company that put “silicon” in “Silicon Valley,” investors are wondering if Intel has bottomed out. The stock is up over 9% so far in 2023, but down over 35% since this time last year.
Gelsinger’s turnaround plan when he took over was to open up Intel’s factories as foundries, or factories that can make chips for other companies. Intel hopes that by 2026 that it can manufacture chips as advanced as those made by TSMC in Taiwan, and it can compete for custom work like Apple’s A-series chips in iPhones. Intel said on Thursday it was still on track to hit that goal.
But in the meantime, a business that used to print money is struggling, especially in PC chips, which used to be the company’s strongest product line. Global PC shipments dropped nearly 30% in the first quarter, according to an estimate from IDC, as the entire industry is mired in a slump.
Intel’s Client Computing group, which includes the chips that power the majority of desktop and laptop Windows PCs, reported $5.8 billion in revenue, down 38% on an annual basis.
Intel’s server chip division, under its Data Center and AI segment suffered an even worse decline, decreasing 39% to $3.7 billion.
Its smallest full line of business, Network and Edge, posted $1.5 billion in sales, down 30% from the same time last year.
One bright spot was Mobileye, which went public last year but is still controlled by Intel. Mobileye makes systems and software for self-driving cars, and reported 16% sales growth to $458 million.
Intel also said that its recent push to cut costs, including through layoffs, was working, and that it expected to save about $3 billion in 2023 and as much as $10 billion per year by 2025.
Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field said Thursday that artificial intelligence doesn’t pose a serious threat to the future of the design software company, which is on the verge of debuting on the public markets.
“We’re in this moment where you might, if you’re singularity-pilled, go, ‘Hey, superintelligence is coming and it’ll be able to do things that no human can do,” Field told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I have a harder time believing that we’re going to approach that really quickly right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of the picture.”
Figma is slated to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “FIG” on Thursday. Last week, the company estimated that it would price shares in the range of $25 to $28, and on Wednesday it priced above that range at $33 a share.
The offering values Figma, which ranked No. 45 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, at $19.3 billion.
The company was supposed to be acquired by Adobe for $20 billion, but the deal was scrapped in December 2023 after regulators objected.
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So-called “superintelligence,” a type of artificial intelligence that would be more powerful than the human brain, has recently become a growing focus among technology companies.
Field told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that the company’s “complex” graphics engine and other aspects of its technology make it difficult to be replaced by superintelligence.
“I think that’s not stuff that you can learn from looking at code and sort of various places on the internet,” Field said. “It’s not part of the pre-training data mix. I believe that doing that at scale — it’s quite difficult.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been especially vocal about the potential for superintelligence, declaring in a Wednesday memo that the technology will serve as a tool for “individual empowerment” over automation and efficiency.
Meta recently created a lab to pursue superintelligence, and Zuckerberg has poured billions of dollars into building a roster of top AI talent.
— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed reporting to this story.
Roblox stock soared 16% Thursday after the company reported second-quarter revenue that beat expectations amid strong user growth.
The gaming platform saw $1.44 billion in net bookings, up 51% over the year prior. Analysts polled by LSEG expected $1.24 billion in net bookings for the quarter.
User and engagement numbers were also strong for the company, with daily active users at 111.8 million, up 41% year-over-year, and hours engaged at 27.4 billion, up 58% year-over-year.
StreetAccount expected 106 million DAUs.
“Our year on year growth this quarter is a reflection of our strategic investments in infrastructure and performance, discovery, and the virtual economy, which continue to create fertile conditions for creators to thrive as part of a healthy, interconnected ecosystem,” said CEO David Baszucki in a release.
Baszucki added that the company is looking to grab 10% of the global gaming content market.
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Roblox raised its booking guidance for the third quarter and now expects between $1.59 billion and $1.64 billion. FactSet expected $1.42 billion in third-quarter bookings.
The gaming platform did report a net loss of $279.38 million, a loss of 41 cents per share. Roblox had a net loss of $205.88 million, a loss of 32 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
The platform rolled out new age verification tools two weeks ago, as the broader gaming industry and app stores have faced regulatory pressure to improve safety for young users and limit access to certain types of content.
Roblox Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman said the age-estimation tools will help keep younger users from accessing “something that should be limited to an older audience — 13 and over.”
Kaufman said having more mature content opportunities will help teens and adults stay on Roblox instead of moving to other platforms.
META CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
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Shares of Meta soared 12% and Microsoft popped 5% on Thursday, after the companies reported better-than-expected earnings that beat on top and bottom lines.
Microsoft topped the $4 trillion market cap benchmark with the move, joining Nvidia in the club.
Both Meta and Microsoft have been investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure in recent years, and the companies said they expect to continue to shell out billions in capital expenditures.
Meta said capital expenditures will range between $66 billion and $72 billion for the full year, raising the low end of the company’s previous estimate of between $64 billion and $72 billion. Microsoft sees over $30 billion in fiscal first quarter capital expenditures and assets acquired through finance leases, while analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha had expected $24.23 billion.
Analysts at Citi said the companies’ increased capital expenditures will likely be a boon for chipmakers. Microsoft makes up roughly 8% of Advanced Micro Devices‘ sales, while Meta makes up about 2% of Broadcom’s sales, the analysts said.
“We believe AVGO and AMD will be the primary beneficiaries of Microsoft’s and Meta’s increased capex,” they wrote in a Thursday note.
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In addition to increased capital expenditures, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring blitz, highlighted by a $14.3 billion investment into the data-labeling startup Scale AI and the launch of its new Meta Superintelligence Labs unit.
Morgan Stanley analysts said they “applaud the effort” and are pleased with the state of Meta’s core business, but they remain a little wary of Zuckerberg’s AI spending.
“On one hand, the core business is so strong that it’s paying for all the new AI talent and infra several times over, but on the other hand the cavalier nature by which Zuckerberg is throwing money around is a bit unnerving, especially if things don’t come together as planned with the new superintelligence team,” the analysts wrote.
Barclays analysts said Microsoft’s generative AI scaling is still playing out, but the strong demand for its data center infrastructure continues to point to ongoing momentum for the quarters ahead. They maintained their overweight rating on the stock.
“With its strong Q4 FY25 results, MSFT confirmed its unique status in the software space and will likely continue to be one of the core holdings by investors,” they wrote in a note Wednesday.
Microsoft reported $76.44 billion in revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter, up 18% year over year. The company said net income increased to $27.23 billion, or $3.65 per share, from $22.04 billion a year ago.
Meta reported $47.52 billion in revenue for its second quarter, up 22% year over year. Its net income rose 36% year over year to $18.34 billion, or $7.14 per share.