- Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon, who has been bearish on Intel (INTC -4.8%) for some time. "We could actually feel the cheer leach out of the room a bit during [CFO] Stacy Smiths’s final presentation, as outlook for 2014 (mostly flat on revenues, gross margins, operating income, and capex) was likely not quite as good as some had hoped."
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Goldman (Sell) isn't pleased with Intel's guidance for flat 2014 revenue/EPS growth, nor with its steep capex budget (~$11B). It also thinks the revenue forecast could be aggressive since it "assumes no negative impact from the end of the corporate [PC] refresh cycle," and also assumes a pickup in server CPU division growth to a low-teens rate.
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Jefferies, however, is lifting its PT to $32. "Intel's message was compelling: its product line is geared to the new market reality, PCs are stabilizing, servers are growing, and it expects to grow its tablet MPU shipments by 4x to 40m units in 2014."
- SA contributor and Intel bull Ashraf Eassa is upbeat about the pending launch of Intel's dual-core Merrifield Atom smartphone CPU, the 2H14 launch of its 14nm Cherry Trail Atom tablet CPU (Bay Trail's successor), and (especially) the 2015 launch of its Broxton smartphone/tablet CPUs.
- Perhaps the biggest issue weighing on investors' minds: While keeping capex high to maintain its manufacturing edge, Intel is trying to offset declining sales of Core PC CPUs by ramping sales of Atom CPUs that often have far lower ASPs, and which some think could end up cannibalizing low-end Core sales.