Intel Corp (INTC)

[Nitt]

re"Although this year seasonal demand has not soared as before, board manufacturers have still felt relatively stronger buying sentiment compared to other IT product makers."

Based on this along with other information regarding a ramping September (be it a modest ramp), along with AMDs warning that said the PC market is down, I'm beginning to believe Intel is probably at the high end of the range... maybe right at the top.

Here's my thinking: The sale of AMD's stuff seems to have tanked in the later part of the quarter causing >$100M miss. We are getting reports that September seems to have strengthened vs. previous months, but AMD did not participate. That leaves Intel participating with CPUs and probably chipsets and motherboards. In a turns situation, it's much easier for Intel to say "we don't have as many of those really cheap CPUs... can you take the one's that cost a bit more"?

My guess is the quarter will come in at $6.65-6.8B, margins will be at or above the 51% mark, and EPS will be $0.14-0.16.

Guidance for Q-4 will probably be tempered and start with a range of whatever they have in Q3 actual up to Q3 actual plus $600M… they will leave room to update at mid quarter. So assume somewhere between $6.65B and 7.2B or $6.8B-7.4B. Margin outlook will be 52 or 53 plus or minus a few points for Q4.

That’s my shot… I’m not sure what it does to the stock price with all the uncertainty on the market, so I just hold at this point.

Nitt