Intel's Q2 Results Surpass Expectations, Highlights Apple, Microsoft & Amazon

Intel Corporation INTC reported better earnings than most analysts expected. "I think, if you look at the numbers, this clearly indicates that many people on the Street were totally clueless on Intel," Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry told Benzinga. "They beat both bottom line, top line and they guided up, which clearly indicates that the datacenter buildout has just started." Chowdhry said that Intel had "very strong" results compared to expectations for PC growth. He believes this "clearly indicates" that Apple Inc. AAPL will report strong Mac sales. He also said that Intel is benefiting from the rising cloud businesses at Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Microsoft Corporation MSFT. "[The] new MacBook…has been one of the hottest-selling PCs since the launch," said Chowdhry. "The beat on the PC is not Windows-based PCs but the Apple Mac. If you look at the numbers, it means the cloud business from Amazon and Microsoft will be very good and it also shows that the Mac business from Apple is also going to be very strong. This is a key takeaway from Intel's numbers and guidance."

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A Far More Important Report

Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, told Benzinga that Intel's report may prove to be far more important than the one Wall Street was waiting for: Netflix, Inc. NFLX. "Everybody thought this quarter was going to be a complete disaster," said Udall. "I didn't. I should have been more public about it, to be honest. But Intel came in with a very, very nice beat." Udall said there were a "rash of analyst downgrades" before the quarter. "There was no one saying, 'Buy the stock at $29,'" Udall added. "Everybody was talking about the death of the PC channel -- the death of Microsoft, the death of Windows, the death of the PC hardware food chain, etc. [But] Microsoft isn't going anywhere. I think Windows 10 is going to be good. I think the Windows 10 cycle is going to be good. And the death of the PC has been written 25 times. Whether it's fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your perspective, I think the PC is gonna be with us another decade or two."

Successful Pivot

Chowdhry said that Intel "will continue to do fine because they have successfully pivoted to the cloud." "Just like ARM are the chips of choice for mobile computing, Intel chips are the chips of choice to power the cloud," Chowdhry concluded. "I think powering the cloud is a much bigger and more profitable business than mobile devices." Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.