Intel releases Q1 2020 financial results

Intel has announced its Q1 2020 financial results, and they're predictably strong even with the current state of the world. 

Overall, Intel saw $19.8 billion in revenue, a whopping $3.7 billion increase over Q1 2019, and only a minor dip compared to Q4 2019 which is traditionally the strongest time of year. Income was similarly positive with $5.7 billion in net income proving to be a 43 percent improvement over Q1 2019. Gross margins were to 60.6 percent. 

How does that break down into specific areas? Intel saw 43 percent year on year revenue up in its Data Center Group (DCG) including 53 percent growth in cloud service provider revenue. It also saw 14 percent of growth when it came to PC based sales, compared to Q1 2019, which we're guessing has been aided by the increase in the need to work from home leading to more purchases having to be made hastily although this would have only been seen in the latter half of the quarter. Ultimately, much of this success will have been down to Intel simply holding the monopoly. 

When it comes to IoT, Intel has seen more mixed results with Mobileye revenue up 22 percent over last year but the rest of the IoT side of things seeing a drop of 3 percent in revenue. 

In sideline interesting news, Intel's storage group saw record revenue with year-over-year growth of 46 percent.

In a statement, Intel CEO, Bob Swan, explained, 'our first-quarter performance is a testament to our team's focus on safeguarding employees, supporting our supply chain partners and delivering for our customers during this unprecedented challenge' before going onto say 'I am confident we will emerge from this situation an even stronger company.'

The financial results mention Intel's ability to maintain essential factory operations with greater than 90 percent on-time delivery while remaining safe during the pandemic. It also cites its Intel Pandemic Response Technology Initiative which went some way to aiding this. 

Effectively, Intel has benefited in part from the pandemic but it's cautious. The company hasn't provided full-year financial guidance due to concerns about the economic uncertainty that's here to stay for a while with Chief Financial Officer explaining 'at some point we’re going to see the recession start to impact demand for PCs.' 

Despite that, Tiger Lake based processors are still on the cards with a 'by mid-year' launch in mind as indicated by one of Intel's conference call slides. Reportedly, the chip will be included in 50 different laptops that will go on sale during the crucial 2020 holiday shopping season. Not that Intel has forecast sales for that period just yet. 

Whatever happens, it's clear that Intel is doing just fine. As always.