Down the Swanny: '2020 has been the most challenging year in my career' says Intel CEO as profit plunges 30%

Intel shares dived today after it revealed a steep slump in enterprise and government sales of its server chips – and delays to its latest Xeons. According to its third-quarter financial figures, released on Thursday, Chipzilla's enterprise and government data center revenues halved, year on year, as customers closed their …

[six_tymes]

all fault goes to the previous ceo, he spent years getting his noddle wet instead of working. all during his noodle sessions amd caught up. as silly as that sounds, its truth.

[RM Myers]

"Our teams delivered solid third-quarter results that exceeded our expectations..."

Intel's CEO seems quite happy, thus confirming the old wittciism that "the secret to happiness is low expectations."

[BillG]

History Repeats Itself

Intel shares dived today after it revealed a steep slump in enterprise and government sales of its server chips – and delays to its latest Xeons.

Isn't this what always happens when you replace experienced professionals with cheap college grads? This is not a surprise, this is history.

[Maelstorm]

Over the last few years, Intel has been beset by one disaster after another. Intel just sat on their laurels while AMD caught them with their pants down. So just like the story of the tortoise and the hare, the hare found out that slow and steady wins the race. In this case, Intel is the hare and AMD is the tortoise. A lot of their current woes is from current events. But let's not forget that Meltdown bug a few years ago. The reason why people are moving to AMD (yes, I'm one of them) is because we do not trust Intel. We do not trust the quality or the security of their products. I was one of those who got burned by them. As Scotty once said "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel. The ex86 company. Sell.

"let's not forget that Meltdown bug a few years ago. The reason why people are moving away from Intel is because we do not trust Intel. We do not trust the quality or the security of their products OR THEIR MANAGEMENT TEAM".

FTFY.

What's the current state of play of the insider trading and other stories about UKnowWho these days anyway?

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/04/after-meltdown-and-spectre-revelation-questions-arise-about-timing-of-intel-ceos-stock-sales/

https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/23/brian_krzanich_intel/

[David Roberts]

50% margin?

On a turnover of billions?

The growth may be diminishing but the money tree is awesome.

Shares may be over valued (10% drop is eye watering) but there is still money in tham thar hills.

[Charlie Clark]

I'd like to have their problems

Gross margin of 53.1 per cent, a decrease of 5.7 percentage points.

Who else in the industry has anything close to that? Means there's still a way to go, assuming orders don't dry up completely and the margins give them scope to cut prices aggressively if need be.

Of course, they still need to sort out all their other CPU problems as well.

[johnnyblaze]

Pah!

Intel blamed COVID as most companies can do now (and get away with it), but at no point did he blame tough competition from AMD. It's almost like Intel don't even want to acknowledge AMD, even though their eating Intel's breakfast - and lunch - in many different areas. Quite please to hear these results actually, long may the continue.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Pah!

There's a reason for this: blaming COVID-19 makes you elligible for handouts. See Daimler's results: wouldn't be anything like that impressive if the German government hadn't paid the tab for at least 6 weeks short time work.

[nohomo]

Didn't Intel put half a billion dollar into "diversity and inclusion" measures just a few years ago?

You guys just wait when this tree starts to bear fruit. AMD won't know what hit 'em.

That will be Intels real strength. They have set their priorities straight...

[bombastic bob]

RE: spending $1 billion on 'diversity'

They have set their priorities straight...

you were KIDDING, right? [in my view, that would be lawsuit defense at the expense of profitability]

a poisoned tree bears poisonous fruit.

Intel might need to 'clean house' a bit, though. Mega-corporations tend to become top-heavy, lots of bureucratic "scampering" without actually getting anything done (makes me think 'Agile'). They could most likely re-arrange their middle and upper management to become more efficient, maybe incentive for early retirement bonuses and things of that nature. (You can do it without layoffs, in other words)

But usually when companies like Intel restructure, they sharpen their axes instead... and upper management seems to stay about the same, doesn't it?

and a remaining question, does "diversity" include AGE?

[Dwarf]

We live in interesting times

So they blame the cause as customers closing their wallets yet they didn't deliver the new CPU's that would be provide better bang for their buck. They might also find that customers are slightly miffed about the little tiny CPU security vulnerabilities thing that we all had to work around at our cost to patch and the reduction in performance. Yep, understand your customers and what they want. Don't forget that they control if you have income or not and therefore if you are successful or not.

Forget about blaming COVID, its got nothing to to with the situation and actually if anything, you could have sold more processors for the surge in home working, its just that they are probably ARM or AMD CPU's. Perhaps those figures are in the numbers and things are worse without COVID helping you ?

There has to be a little irony in the naming of the ex-86 as people are moving away as their demands change and scale-out architectures take a firmer grip. Life's no longer about one OS or one application.

Sounds like its time to diversify, so not a good time to sell other product lines .. ahh, ok, short term cash injection you say .. hmm the history books will say if you are right.

[bombastic bob]

Re: We live in interesting times

customers are slightly miffed about the little tiny CPU security vulnerabilities thing that we all had to work around at our cost to patch and the reduction in performance

Since AMD processors were "mostly unaffected" by the more egregious vulnerabilities, I'd put this at the TOP of the list of "why our profits were lower than expected" [including the efforts to mitigate it].

[msobkow]

You could try actually getting those new products to SHIP that you've been promising for over 5 years while other wafer manufacturers have gleefully eaten your "not invented here" lunch. :)