Intel Profit, Sales Easily Beat Wall Street Forecasts
Published: Tuesday, 13 Oct 2009 | 4:53 PM ET
By: CNBC.com with AP

Intel reported profit and revenue that both substantially outpaced expectations Tuesday as the company's shares were halted in late trading.

RELATED LINKS

Intel said after markets closed Tuesday that it earned 35 cents a share on revenue of $9.39 billion in the third quarter.

In the same quarter last year, Intel earned 35 cents a share on a topline of $10.217 billion.

Analysts who follow Intel had forecast earnings of 28 cents a share on sales of $9.037 billion, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

The world's biggest maker of microprocessors also forecast fourth-quarter sales of $10.1 billion, give or take $400 million. It put its fourth-quarter gross margin at 62 percent, plus or minus 3 percentage points.

After initially being halted in extended hours Intel shares jumped about 5 percent late Tuesday. Get the latest quotes for Intel here.

The stock rose 0.44 percent higher to $20.49 [INTC 20.49 0.09 (+0.44%) ] during the regular Nasdaq session.

"You’re starting to see signs of a recovery. You have the consumer side helping Intel. Looking into next year, Intel should have multiple traction from consumer, corporate spending, enterprise spending return, server refresh, you have Windows 7 and margins is the key to the story," Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at ThinkEquity, told CNBC. "Gross margins have rebounded and will continue to improve in the future."

Intel's results are generally seen as an important measurement of PC industry health, and in turn a sign of the trend in technology spending as a whole.

As the first major technology company to report calendar-year third-quarter earnings, Intel's results are closely watched for clues about technology demand among consumers and businesses. Intel's customers include the world's biggest PC and computer server makers.