Shares of Intel (INTC) are down 40 cents, or 1.8%, at $21.43, following weaker-than-usual chip sales data from the Semiconductor Industry Association over the weekend, and a downgrade to Market Perform from Market Outperform this morning by JMP Securities’s Alex Gauna.
Gauna cut his estimates for this year’s profit per share to $1.85 from $2.15, and cut next year’s estimate to $1.70 from $2.25, warning of what he thinks might be a delay in Intel’s “Haswell” processors for PCs and servers this year and next.
Gauna says third parties he spoke to at a tech conference express the view Intel is experiencing some delays with Haswell, the latest “micro architecture” change to the company’s microprocessors, which was excepted to bring extra power savings, initially for PCs:
The Intel effort to integrate a voltage regulation (VR) stage into the Haswell architecture appears to have fallen short of desired results, and the company is consequently reversing course and not pursuing this power management scheme with subsequent products. Our discovery of this issue came from discussions with multiple power management partners at the APEC (Applied Power Electronics Conference) trade show that was held March 17-21, 2013, and we were also informed that they had only just become aware of Intel’s change of direction in prior weeks. To be clear, the industry sources we spoke with indicated Haswell is working, but that �the new power approach did not live up to expectations.� It was the consensus view that timelines were also slipping, both for the Haswell refresh for PCs in 2H13 and likely down the road for the next two-socket Xeon server move to Haswell that is known as Grantley and expected in 2H14 [�] Sources declined to elaborate on (or didn?t know) the exact performance implications; however, integrated VR was touted as a key feature that will afford the Haswell platform improved power efficiency without compromising performance. We also know from speaking with senior Intel engineers that integrated VR had been �an area of great debate internally.� It seems evident at this juncture that this debate was won by integration proponents, but then lost in terms of benefit yield.
Writes Gauna, “If the new VR approach does not work as expected, it calls into question Intel and its partners’ ability to field a next generation of Ultrabooks, convertibles and tablets with appealing enough form factors and battery life to staunch the tide of ARM-based tablets.”
Gauna also notes any Haswell power issues could reduce one of the purported benefits to Intel’s server shipments as well:
It was the consensus view that timelines were also slipping, both for the Haswell refresh for PCs in 2H13 and likely down the road for the next two-socket Xeon server move to Haswell that is known as Grantley and expected in 2H14.
These concerns, he notes, come amidst a backdrop of Intel not having made gains in mobile computing, which is where computing demand is shifting:
The unfortunate thing for Intel is that overall computing demand appears generally healthy. The demand, however, is heavily skewed toward tablets and smartphones where Intel has yet to establish a material presence. Intel has been able to make only modest progress in smartphones and tablets to date, and there was no evidence out of the 2013 CES or Mobile World Congress trade shows to suggest this is likely to change this year.
The end results, he thinks, is,
We expect 2014 gross margins to be weighed upon by under-absorbed capital spending expenses, and operating margins to be impacted by ongoing levels of elevated spending as Intel continues to pound away on its mobile initiatives in smartphones and tablets.
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