Intel Corp.’s stock rode a roller coaster early last week with its price falling sharply Monday on analyst concerns about depressed microprocessor prices, followed by a surge on Wednesday after the company reported third-quarter results that beat lowered expectations.
Monday’s slide of $3.44 per share saw Intel’s stock fall to $35.69 per share, just off its 52-week low of $32.50 per share, and more than half off its 52-week high of $75.81 set in late August.
The Wednesday recovery was triggered by the company’s third-quarter results showing net income before acquisition-related charges rising 52 percent to $2.9 billion, a return of 41 cents per share, compared with $1.9 billion, a return of 27 cents per share, posted for the third quarter last year. Investors snapped up Intel shares on the news, sending the stock up as high as $39.81 per share in mid-day trading.
Intel also forecast modest sales growth into the fourth quarter, expecting sales to increase between 4 percent and 8 percent from those in the third quarter.
In a note to clients, U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Ashok Kumar said, “Intel’s stock break is the worst since the crash of 1987. If fundamentals do not deteriorate in the December quarter, the stock should bounce back to the two-year line-$43 to $44 area.”
In between its active stock price, Intel released its 1.8 Volt Wireless Flash Memory chip designed to enhance the performance of next-generation Internet phones and wireless devices, and carry out key functions up to four times faster than existing flash solutions.
Intel said the increased performance of the new chip, its second flash product built on .18-micron process technology, results in higher data throughput rates that speed up data-intensive Internet phone applications, including browsing, data streaming and text messaging.
“This is the highest performing flash for Internet phones, and we expect this architecture to become the de facto standard for next-generation Internet phones and handheld devices,” said Curt Nichols, general manager of Intel’s Flash Products Group.
The chip includes integrated flexible partition read-while-write architecture with synchronous burst and asynchronous page mode read operations and security-enabling features from Intel’s Advanced+ Boot Block, as well as an Enhanced Factory Programming architecture.
The flexible partition architecture allows the phone or device to read from one partition while writing to or erasing another partition. Intel said this feature improves the speed that information can be stored and accessed in the flash memory by up to 40 percent.
The synchronous burst mode and asynchronous page mode read operations are designed to accelerate cell-phone memory subsystems by accessing the flash memory contents with asynchronous page and synchronous burst reads. The burst mode supports up to 66 megahertz with 14-nanosecond subsequent access, with the page mode allowing first access in 70 nanoseconds and 20 nanosecond subsequent access.
“Next-generation cellular and wireless devices will incorporate more data features like Internet browsing, voicemail recording and receiving text and fax messages,” Nichols said. “These type of applications are much more data intensive and will require the higher data throughput rates that are achieved with this flash memory.”
In addition to its performance characteristics, the new flash memory is designed to consume only 1.8 volts of power, extending stand-by and talk time as well as battery life of mobile devices.
Acknowledging that all this potential is of no use if manufacturers cannot get the products out on time, Intel noted that the Flash chips integrated EFP architecture uses a programming algorithm that doubles programming throughput, reducing costs to manufacturers.
Intel will be sampling 32 Megabit and 64 MBit densities of the chip this month, with production scheduled for the first quarter of next year. Prices for the chips, in 10,000-unit quantities, are set at $16 each for the 32 MBit chip and $30 each for the 64 MBit chip. Intel said a 128 MBit density chip is expected to follow later next year.
