Technology

Full 360-Degree Intel Earnings Preview

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) will report its third-quarter earnings Tuesday after the market closes. This processor leader and semiconductor giant posted an earnings report for the previous quarter strong enough that took shares up almost 10% on the reaction alone. While some investors may have hopes for a repeat performance, the price of the stock has been hit hard with the market and with Microchip Technology’s revenue warning last week.

24/7 Wall St. has provided earnings and revenue estimates, as well as given additional color. This includes options trader expectations, a chart and trading history analysis, analyst expectations, a short interest reading and additional data.

Thomson Reuters has consensus earnings estimates of $0.65 per share on $14.45 billion in revenues. This would compare to the previous year’s third-quarter earnings of $0.58 per share and $13.48 billion in revenues. Estimates for the fourth quarter are $0.62 in earnings per share and revenue of $14.49 billion.

What we have seen in 2014 is the world of PCs did not die. It even faced a resurgence in spending after Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP. This drove new PC spending as newer operating systems at the enterprise level needed more powerful processors and memory.

Wells Fargo said this week ahead of earnings that it expects Intel to be among the chip companies the firm expects to meet their September earnings estimates and to meet the December quarter guidance.

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In the weeks ahead of this earnings report, the stock made a significant jump of 9.3% to $34.42 on July 16 from the previous close $31.50, after the second-quarter earnings were reported. Closing prices held within the range of $33 to $35 following the previous earnings, and the share price had made no large shift until Friday, when it fell 5% to $31.91.

Intel’s short interest for late September was recorded at 124 million shares, with 4.37 days to cover. It has been on the decline steadily over the past 52 weeks, about 49% from the high of 255 million in October 2013.

Options will be a bit richer as of Tuesday, compared to two or three weeks ago, now that the VIX has spiked with the increased volatility. That being said, options traders appear to be braced for a move of at least $1.00, or about 3%, in either direction based on the earnings event. Another observation is that the open interest was close enough on the closest put and call strike of $32.50 but the earnings day trading volume was skewed much more to the call options side. The open interest of the next speculative strike price of $33 on the calls was over 68,000 contracts, versus almost 18,000 contracts for the $32 strike puts. All of these imply that the options bets have a much more bullish bias to them going into earnings.

The 200-day moving average is still well below the current share price, all the way down at $28.75. In late September the share price crossed under the 50-day moving average, which now reads at $34.20, and the 50-day average had acted as resistance for a week or so prior to the latest selling pressure.

As many stocks have traded higher on Tuesday — after three days of very strong selling pressure — Intel’s stock price was up about 3% at $32.42 late Tuesday morning. Shares of Intel have a consensus analyst price target of $ 34.36 and a 52-week trading range of $23.03 to $35.56.

ALSO READ: Wells Fargo Defends Chip Sector, While Seeing Risks, Ahead of Earnings

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