Intel CEO tries to calm investor concerns about security flaws

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich opened his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call with comments on the Spectre and Meltdown security flaws recently discovered in nearly all of Intel’s processors.

He said that the company is working “around the clock with our customers and partners” to address the flaws and that he is “acutely aware that we have more to do” beyond issuing software fixes.

In the long-term, Intel is implementing changes in its processors to permanently circumvent the security risks, and those updated processors will start appearing in the market later this year. In the near-term, Intel is delivering more fixes, but Krzanich acknowledged that the situation is highly dynamic and shared that the company is updating its risk factors as a result.

“We are committed to the task, and I am confident we are up to the challenge,” Krzanich said. He added that he had assigned some of the best minds at Intel to deal with the problem.

Above: Inside a self-driving car with Mobileye technology.

Image Credit: Intel

Meanwhile, Intel reported fourth-quarter financials that beat estimates for earnings and revenue growth in the holiday quarter. Analysts expected Intel to report non-GAAP earnings of 86 cents a share on revenues of $16.34 billion in the fourth quarter. Instead, Intel reported non-GAAP earnings of $1.08 a share on revenues of $17.1 billion.

A year ago, Intel reported earnings of 79 cents on $16.37 billion. The company has been cutting its expenses in order to deal with slower growth as the smartphone has superseded the PC to become consumers’ primary device for communicating and surfing the internet.

Full-year revenue was $62.8 billion, while earnings were $3.46 a share, compared with $59.5 billion and earnings of $2.72 a share a year earlier. McAfee, the security software division that Intel spun out, saw revenue grow 8 percent.

In after-hours trading, Intel’s stock price is up 3.75 percent to $47 a share.

Intel’s client-computing group revenues were $9 billion in the quarter, down 2 percent. Datacenter revenue was $5.6 billion, up 20 percent. Internet of things (IoT) revenue was $879 million, up 21 percent. The memory group had revenue of $889 million, up 9 percent. And programmable solutions revenue was $568 million, up 35 percent.

Data-centric business was 47 percent of Intel’s Q4 revenue. During the quarter, Intel launched a record volume of Core i7 processors, and it also shipped the eighth-generation Core processor. Krzanich said Intel has 30 design wins for its Mobileye chips for self-driving cars.

He also said that the PC market improved over the course of 2017 and added that while the competitive environment intensified, Intel stepped up and delivered record results for the full year.