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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

10nm woes, CPU supply shortages, competition from AMD... What? Sorry? Intel can't hear you over the cash register going bonkers:

Intel on Thursday reported $20.2bn revenue for the fourth quarter of 2019, a gain of eight per cent year-on-year, and $72bn for the full-year, a two per cent increase.

Analysts had been expecting something less, around $19.23bn and $70.98bn on average, and the results lifted the chip giants stock in after-hours trading.

CEO Bob Swan, in a canned statement, said more or less that things had gone well, without providing any specifics: "In 2019, we gained share in an expanded addressable market that demands more performance to process, move and store data," he said. "One year into our long-term financial plan, we have outperformed our revenue and EPS expectations."

Not the sort of stuff that gets one booked for a commencement address.

Chipzilla's numbers said as much, though more succinctly. Its earnings per share came to $1.58 for the quarter and $4.71 for the year. Its gross margin for the quarter was 58.8 per cent, down 60.2 per cent in Q4 2018; for the year, its gross margin was 58.6 per cent, down from 61.7 per cent in 2018.

Intel's fourth quarter operating margin came in at 36 per cent, up half a percentage point from the same period a year ago.

Operating income was $6.8bn for Q4 and $22bn for 2019; net income was $6.9bn and $21bn respectively. In fact so much money has been rolling in that Chipzilla increased its per-share annual dividend to $1.32, an increase of five per cent.

Intel generated $33.1bn in cash from its operations in 2019 and $16.9bn in free cash flow while routing about $19.2bn back to shareholders. In Q4 2019, Chipzilla's cash machine created $9.9bn and dispensed $1.4bn in dividends, with another $3.5bn going to buy back Intel shares to support the share price.

The chip maker's revenue is split more or less evenly between its data-center business (DCG) and its PC-centric trade (CCG). However, its data-center, sorry, -centric business is expected to grow faster than its counterpart.

Original Submission