High demand for chips buoys Intel Q3 results

Intel's profit for the third quarter scraped in just above the previous period's figure, due to what it claims was a surge in demand for its microprocessors during September.

In the quarter ended 26 September, the chip giant saw net profit of $1.56 billion, slightly down on the $1.57 billion in the same period last time.

Turnover was up 9.4 per cent to $6.7 billion from $6.2 billion.

However, the net profit nine-month period was down 23 per cent to $4 billion from $5.2 billion in the previous year.

The results came on the back of a fruitful third quarter for rival AMD, which returned to the black with $1 million net profit and $686 million sales, after problems with fulfilling OEM capacity and low yield. In the same period of 1997, AMD reported a net loss of $31.6 million and sales of $597 million.

In a statement, Craig Barrett, president and chief executive of Intel, said the company had benefitted from strong demand from PC vendors in the third quarter 'as the PC industry recovered from its inventory problems.'

But in terms of geographic revenues in the quarter, the Americas provided a further three per cent up on the second quarter at 47 per cent of total turnover. European revenues declined by two per cent to 26 per cent, Asia Pacific remained at 20 per cent and Japan's fell one point to seven per cent.

In a further statement, Rob Eckelmann, managing director of Intel Europe, acknowledged the stationary performance of the region and said Europe continued to post growth in most areas but 'there is no room for complacency'.

Intel expects fourth-quarter turnover to be up slightly on the third quarter's figure of $6.7 billion.