Intel prepares for flat sales in 2014

Tech giant claims PC market is stabilising but does not expect any sales growth this year

Intel's shares fell three per cent last night after it announced it was not expecting a boost in sales this year.

For its last full year ending 28 December 2013, Intel's revenue slumped one per cent annually to $52.7bn (£32.28bn), while net income slid 13 per cent to $9.6bn. It said for its next year, it expects sales to be "approximately flat", prompting a three per cent share slump in after-hour trading, according to Forbes.

Despite its lacklustre full-year results, the tech giant had a better fourth quarter, with net income jumping six per cent annually to $2.6bn on sales which crept up three per cent to $13.8bn over the same period.

In its Q4, Intel's like-for-like Datacentre division's sales shot up seven per cent and its Cloud arm's sales rocketed 35 per cent year on year. There was similar sales growth in its Storage segment, which swelled 24 per cent annually in Q4.

But the same could not be said for its Enterprise business, which it said fell short of its expectations for both Q4 and the full year.

"We overestimated the rate of recovery among corporate buyers," Intel said in a statement.

Despite a dire year for the PC market as a whole - shipments shrunk 10 per cent in 2013, according to Gartner - Intel said its impact on the firm was minimal.

"While the PC market was down on the year, we saw the market stabilise in the back half of the year with fourth quarter PC units up from a year ago," said Stacy Smith, Intel's chief financial officer.

"Additionally we saw strong tablet growth in the back half of the year, and inclusive of PC and tablets, our unit growth in the fourth quarter was up almost 10 per cent from a year ago."

While Intel is bracing for a year of flat sales, in its first quarter it expects revenue to only reach $12.8bn - $1bn less than its figure for the quarter just gone. It said this is in line with average seasonal decline traditionally seen in Q1.