Friday, January 27th 2017

Intel Announces Q4 2016 and Full-Year Revenues - Record Q4, YOY

Intel today announced their quarterly earnings for Q4 of the 2016 fiscal year. The company set a new record for revenue for this quarter, coming in at $16.4 billion (up 10% from a year ago, which stood at $14.9B). For the year, Intel brought in $59.4 billion, up 7% from their 2015 results. Intel's gross margin fell, though, by 1.7 points down to a still hugely respectable 60.9%, with operating income of $12.9 billion, down 8% from a year ago. Net income was down 10% to $10.3 billion, and earnings per share fell 9% to $2.12. Intel announced a record annual cash flow from operations of $21.8 billion, with solid earnings with GAAP net income of $10.3 billion, and non-GAAP net income of $13.2 billion.

Leaving the corporate numbers talk behind us for a moment, this means that Intel managed to have another astounding year, with solid execution and even more solid margins and revenues. However, take a peek under the hood, and Intel's wins are based on consumer losses: lower volumes in almost all channels were offset by higher average selling prices (ASP), meaning that Intel is (like any company on the top would) keeping its revenue streams up by charging more for its products.
Intel's Client Computing Group, which provides CPUs, SoCs, and wireless and wired connectivity products destined for PCs, had revenue for the year of $32.9 billion, up 2%, but with platform volume being down 10%. The fact that Intel managed to increase revenue with lower volume of shipments is directly charged to the consumer, with an 11% increase in platform selling prices. For the last quarter, the Client Computing Group had revenues of $9.1 billion, up 4% from a year ago, with platform volumes being down 7%, and again, this difference being offset by selling prices up 7%. Desktop platform volume was down 9%, with a lower increase in the ASP at just 2%, while notebook volumes remained flat but with a platform average selling price being up by 3%. What we see here is Intel basically making up the loss in revenue that would be expected with lower channel volume by increasing the ASPs of its platforms - this means the company can try and remain its revenues at the same level, even with lower volume of sales, though this burden then passes towards the consumer, who has to pay more for the same average product. Here's hoping increased competitiveness in the Client and Computing segment will bring more options to consumers, and thus a need for Intel to rethink its revenue targets at the expense of customers.
The Data Center Group also had a strong quarter, and year. For the year, Intel announced revenue of $17.2 billion, up 7% from $16.0 billion a year ago. For the year, Intel saw volumes up 3% and ASP up 4%. For the most recent quarter, the Data Center Group had revenues of $4.7 billion, which was up 3%. Platform volumes were down 3%, with ASP up 6%.
Intel is ever more increasing its investment in the Internet of Things group, which had revenues for the year at $2.6 billion, up 13% from $2.3 a year ago. Revenue for this quarter was up 5% to $726 million. The Non-Volatile Memory Solutions group had revenues for the quarter of $816 million, up 26% from a year ago, and a full-year revenue of $2.58 billion, down slightly from the $2.6 billion a year ago. Programmable Solutions is new for Intel this year, with the purchase of Altera, and this segment had revenue of $420 million for this quarter, and $1.7 billion for the year.
All in all, it would seem that 2016 has been a somewhat strange year for Intel, with the official death of the tick-tock cadence of process shrinks and new architecture development (arguably dead before then, but I digress) and the gutting of Intel's mobile SoC aspirations. Lower overall channel volumes (which can be justified by both a stagnation in innovation and the "good enough" mentality which most customers can now have regarding their systems) were offset by increased selling prices, but these can only do so much. If the market continues its trend, Intel will have to revise its overall growth and revenue targets, since there is only so much that the average consumer is willing to part with in acquiring their technology. However, it has to be said that Intel has done some tremendous strides in increasing the overall areas in which they compete, with a timely and savant acquisition of Altera, and their investments in the Internet of Things segments.
Sources: Intel Shareholder Release, Intel Earnings Conference
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27 Comments on Intel Announces Q4 2016 and Full-Year Revenues - Record Q4, YOY

#1
chaosmassive
So Intel has earned multiple AMDs sized chunk of earning
with same design CPU from SB till KL?

that aside, Intel right now really want that piece of cake in ARM market
Posted on Reply
#2
ensabrenoir
.....nice. inspire of market conditions.
Posted on Reply
#3
Prima.Vera
I'm curious, what is the revenue only for mainstream CPU department?
It would be very interesting to see how many billions they are earning each year by selling almost the same product for the past 6 years.
Posted on Reply
#4
ensabrenoir
Prima.VeraI'm curious, what is the revenue only for mainstream CPU department?
It would be very interesting to see how many billions they are earning each year by selling almost the same product for the past 6 years.
.......Gotta admit though:

1. Billions
2. Massive savings on r&d
3. BILLIONS!!!!!!

Every company would love to be in there place. While personally I hate the stagnation..... Intel has simply outpaced the software's demands right now......
Posted on Reply
#5
nickbaldwin86
Have to remember they keep firing off working and replacing them with machines... helps their revenue A LOT!

they have had a steady flow of layoffs this pass few years.
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#6
Massman
chaosmassiveSo Intel has earned multiple AMDs sized chunk of earning
with same design CPU from SB till KL?
Actually, Haswell and Skylake were both new architectures. Also, Sandy Bridge was on 32nm process. Ivy Bridge brought that down to 22nm and Broadwell to 14nm. Not quite "the same design".
Posted on Reply
#7
EntropyZ
Anything made after 2011 by Intel is just a drugged Sandy Bridge with a process shrink, slightly better IGP, features that rarely matter to an average consumer and hardware DRM put on it. They haven't redesigned their x86 crap in years and milking it to the last drop, charging you more for it as years go by. *slow clap*

Their marketing is almost unstoppable at this point.

This is... not okay for us. It makes me slightly sad when people start upgrading from Skylake to Kaby thinking there is a load of performance gain to be had, or just to say you have the latest and greatest.

CPU's seem to have hit a wall now have they not? Plus anything with more than four cores barely matters for gaming, unless you're only gonna play those few games that are optimized. DX11 isn't going anywhere, MS plans to keep the high-level API and slightly tweak it.

I was so used to huge leaps of performance on CPU's before, now it feels like there is a void.

I had this idea that once Intel has enough money they're gonna become some sort of AI pioneer or military aligned company in the future. I don't think it's that too far fetched (especially when they've been known to be shady at times and make stupid decisions for consumers) but I'm probably gonna be dead by the time that happens, 'cause silicon is dragging it's heels and the new innovations are put on the back burner plus not seeing much funding. *tinfoil hat off* Nobody wants to race to make the fastest or best something, money is all that matters.

How predictable. Truly inspires us all.

People are really getting their bang for buck with previous i7 SKUs, and Xeons. At least something good is out there. Remember when almost every Intel CPU was overclockable? I 'member.

I would get an i7 2600K, but the base price for a set of 16GB DDR3 1866MHz is over 100 euros here if you want to get it new (so slightly over 100$ US). And a good motherboard is rare and costs almost as much as a new Z170/270 board. Ever since they changed the currency everything has been ****** up, why fix something that wasn't broken in the first place.

Sorry for the rant. I find it therapeutic to speak my mind sometimes.
Posted on Reply
#8
Lionheart
In a Parallel universe somewhere, this could be AMD lul :laugh:
Posted on Reply
#9
Prima.Vera
EntropyZAnything made after 2011 by Intel is just a drugged Sandy Bridge with a process shrink, slightly better IGP, features that rarely matter to an average consumer and hardware DRM put on it. They haven't redesigned their x86 crap in years and milking it to the last drop, charging you more for it as years go by. *slow clap*

Their marketing is almost unstoppable at this point.

This is... not okay for us. It makes me slightly sad when people start upgrading from Skylake to Kaby thinking there is a load of performance gain to be had, or just to say you have the latest and greatest.

CPU's seem to have hit a wall now have they not? Plus anything with more than four cores barely matters for gaming, unless you're only gonna play those few games that are optimized. DX11 isn't going anywhere, MS plans to keep the high-level API and slightly tweak it.

I was so used to huge leaps of performance on CPU's before, now it feels like there is a void.

I had this idea that once Intel has enough money they're gonna become some sort of AI pioneer or military aligned company in the future. I don't think it's that too far fetched (especially when they've been known to be shady at times and make stupid decisions for consumers) but I'm probably gonna be dead by the time that happens, 'cause silicon is dragging it's heels and the new innovations are put on the back burner plus not seeing much funding. *tinfoil hat off* Nobody wants to race to make the fastest or best something, money is all that matters.

How predictable. Truly inspires us all.

People are really getting their bang for buck with previous i7 SKUs, and Xeons. At least something good is out there. Remember when almost every Intel CPU was overclockable? I 'member.

I would get an i7 2600K, but the base price for a set of 16GB DDR3 1866MHz is over 100 euros here if you want to get it new (so slightly over 100$ US). And a good motherboard is rare and costs almost as much as a new Z170/270 board. Ever since they changed the currency everything has been ****** up, why fix something that wasn't broken in the first place.

Sorry for the rant. I find it therapeutic to speak my mind sometimes.
So much truth in there. Agreed. Unfortunately for the past 6-7 years there haven't been any major innovation on the x86 CPU market. Look at ARM. In a couple of years they will became a true competitor for the x86 market, and if Intel or AMD wakes up soon, it will even surpass them. (I really want to believe that, but I have a lot of doubts...)
Fair enough, Intel stopped innovating since the competition was almost zero, and like any major unscrupulous company, they are in for the money now, not for the progress. Blame IBM, NEC, AMD, TI, STM, Fujitsu, OKI, Siemens, Cyrix, Intersil, C&T, NexGen, UMC and DM&P too, for the lack of competition on this market, actually to surrender the market to the monopoly of Intel.
Posted on Reply
#10
iO
Prima.VeraFair enough, Intel stopped innovating sinc the competition was almost zero, and like any major unscrupulous company, they are in for the money now, not for the progress. ...
Intel hasnt stopped innovating, they simply shifted their focus to lowering power consumption instead of higher performance since performance is 'good enough' for the vast majority of users for a couple of years now...
Posted on Reply
#11
TheGuruStud
MassmanActually, Haswell and Skylake were both new architectures. Also, Sandy Bridge was on 32nm process. Ivy Bridge brought that down to 22nm and Broadwell to 14nm. Not quite "the same design".
Baloney just like the post above.
Posted on Reply
#12
Prima.Vera
iOIntel hasnt stopped innovating, they simply shifted their focus to lowering power consumption instead of higher performance since performance is 'good enough' for the vast majority of users for a couple of years now...
I call from 4x86 to Pentium innovation. From Pentium to Pentium MMX and Pentium II innovation. From Pentium 4 to Core, that was another innovation.
Going from Core 2600 to 7700 is definitely NOT an innovation but an evolution.
But those are never ending discussions...
Posted on Reply
#13
Rictorhell
I consider myself to be a "computer enthusiast" and I've been a bit disappointed by the lack of advancement in the area of CPUs over the last few years. At one point a few years ago one of AMD'S top people made the announcement that they were going to stop competing to have the best possible/most current CPU process node and that they weren't going to continue to compete for the highest performance CPU. I think that is the point at which Intel really started to relax and take advantage, but honestly, Intel has always had the advantage over AMD in just about every way, regardless. In the rare situations where AMD held a performance advantage in the past, they were not able to take advantage of it and produce enough product, at a fast enough rate, for it to matter.

Besides the lack of competition from other CPU companies, I don't think there are many people out there, other than gamers or professionals, that go out of their way to seek out AND purchase higher end computer components. My own family, to my shame, know that I'm pretty much a computer expert, but still go out of their way to ALWAYS buy the cheapest components and computers available, even when they can afford to at least purchase midrange or higher quality. Then, inevitably, the stuff that they purchase doesn't perform as expected, or it takes forever to accomplish even simple tasks, and THEN they ask me for my opinion or my advice.

I honestly think that many people, to this day, don't understand that the cost of computer equipment is often directly tied to the performance and satisfaction that they are going to get from their equipment. So this, along with financial hardship for a lot of people in recent years, is why Intel can get away with selling a lot of lower end chips that, if people knew better, they would never purchase, separately, or in generic PCs from Wal-Mart, Target, etc. So if people are going to unknowingly buy a ton of these lower end chips and computers from Intel, why should they bother pushing performance at the high end?

Another issue is that virtual reality and artificial intelligence is just now really starting to take off and it's still really in it's infancy. To my knowledge, programmers are still not willing or are not able to really take advantage of multi-core CPUs, or are trained to basically program for single core CPUs or performance. If the majority of the software out there doesn't really take advantage of multiple cores, why should Intel bother pushing out CPUs with more and more cores, year after year? As an enthusiast, that is what I would want them to do, but I haven't seen it at the mid and lower range.

AMD has really pushed additional cores recently, but they haven't been in a position to really "encourage" Intel or others to do anything that they don't absolutely have to do.

I haven't purchased any computer games recently, but there was a time, and it may still be the case, that the newest titles were all going to the consoles first, and IF they came to the PC, they were just watered down console versions of the game, instead of versions that were optimised to take advantage of what a PC can really do. They have free internet access in many libraries. I really wish they would put at least one or two high-end gaming PCs in every library, so that the general public can see what a computer can really do, so that they have an actual basis for comparison and know what they are actually getting, or should be getting for their money. At that point we might start to see some changes in Intel's strategy.

If AMD's Ryzen CPUs are everything that AMD is claiming them to be, AND they are priced competitively, then we might begin to see some positive changes very soon....I hope.

I want to see more advancements and more excitement in the computer field though. It's 2017, but to me, in many ways it feels exactly like it did 10 or 15 years ago; that's not a good thing.
Posted on Reply
#14
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
iOIntel hasnt stopped innovating, they simply shifted their focus to lowering power consumption instead of higher performance since performance is 'good enough' for the vast majority of users for a couple of years now...
Bullcrap. The only way I can move up is pay the price for skt 2011-3 from my current rig. Otherwise the rest would be a side grade
Posted on Reply
#15
R-T-B
TheGuruStudBaloney just like the post above.
It's not baloney. They factually are different micro-architectures. Don't make me sick Wikipedia on you.
Posted on Reply
#16
Vya Domus
RictorhellAnother issue is that virtual reality and artificial intelligence is just now really starting to take off and it's still really in it's infancy. To my knowledge, programmers are still not willing or are not able to really take advantage of multi-core CPUs, or are trained to basically program for single core CPUs or performance. If the majority of the software out there doesn't really take advantage of multiple cores, why should Intel bother pushing out CPUs with more and more cores, year after year? As an enthusiast, that is what I would want them to do, but I haven't seen it at the mid and lower range.

AMD has really pushed additional cores recently, but they haven't been in a position to really "encourage" Intel or others to do anything that they don't absolutely have to do.
.
But things like SMP are fully supported in operating systems since early 2000s , SMT implementations have been developed for decades , Intel and AMD had every reason to start pushing multi core processors. It's not that programmers aren't willing nor trained to write software that makes use of multiple threads , there are more fundamental limitations , not everything can be multi-threaded. However , there is no doubt that sometimes very important software suffered from poor design choices , like DX 12 which despite MS claims it still has at it's heart DX11 wich was already built upon highly dated designs.
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#17
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
Prima.VeraI call from 4x86 to Pentium innovation. From Pentium to Pentium MMX and Pentium II innovation. From Pentium 4 to Core, that was another innovation.
Going from Core 2600 to 7700 is definitely NOT an innovation but an evolution.
But those are never ending discussions...
I would argue their multicore improvements are nothing short of innovation. They went from being the same as a c2q that communicated across the FSB to beating AMD in multicore. That is a bit more than an evolution. Single threaded IPC has mildly improved which isn't a surprise (at least to me). I don't think they could squeeze more out of single threading with today's programs. The CPU isn't the limiting factor.
Posted on Reply
#18
NdMk2o1o
cdawallI would argue their multicore improvements are nothing short of innovation. They went from being the same as a c2q that communicated across the FSB to beating AMD in multicore. That is a bit more than an evolution. Single threaded IPC has mildly improved which isn't a surprise (at least to me). I don't think they could squeeze more out of single threading with today's programs. The CPU isn't the limiting factor.
That was pre SB era which is what he was saying, there has been no innovation from intel since SB/IB just refinements, and lots of users like myself who have a decent clocked i5/i7 from 3-4 years ago have no reason to upgrade, it's pitiful but I think it comes down to AMD not being able to compete and so Intel haven't had to innovate, they can keep refining without spending on R+D to innovate and keep feeding us the same core products with minor tweaks and "enhancements" until they have to up their game. And don't give me the software hasn't caught up with the hardware argument, never has there been a time where we couldn't use more CPU power even when we went from netburst to core2 and then to i5 etc people are more than capable of doing more than one thing at a time with their computers for a long time
Posted on Reply
#19
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
NdMk2o1oThat was pre SB era which is what he was saying, there has been no innovation from intel since SB/IB just refinements, and lots of users like myself who have a decent clocked i5/i7 from 3-4 years ago have no reason to upgrade, it's pitiful but I think it comes down to AMD not being able to compete and so Intel haven't had to innovate, they can keep refining without spending on R+D to innovate and keep feeding us the same core products with minor tweaks and "enhancements" until they have to up their game. And don't give me the software hasn't caught up with the hardware argument, never has there been a time where we couldn't use more CPU power even when we went from netburst to core2 and then to i5 etc people are more than capable of doing more than one thing at a time with their computers for a long time
Multicore improvements from SB to haswell and later have nearly doubled efficiency.
Posted on Reply
#20
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
cdawallMulticore improvements from SB to haswell and later have nearly doubled efficiency.
Its really only in the Skt 2011 and 2011-3 rigs anything really pulls ahead.
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#21
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
eidairaman1Its really only in the Skt 2011 and 2011-3 rigs anything really pulls ahead.
Even 115x has shown marked multicore performance improvements over their predecessors.
Posted on Reply
#22
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
cdawallEven 115x has shown marked multicore performance improvements over their predecessors.
Very minute.

It was the transition from 775 to 1366/ and then 1155 that things changed. Anything after 1155 other than 2011 hasn't been anything special.
Posted on Reply
#23
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
eidairaman1Very minute.

It was the transition from 775 to 1366/ and then 1155 that things changed. Anything after 1155 other than 2011 hasn't been anything special.
It took until haswell for intel to even match AMD per core multithreading. That includes HEDT. Remember their IPC improvement over AMD masked a lot of shortfalls.
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#24
Hood
Perhaps Intel has been secretly working on a totally new architecture to replace "Core". and is waiting for a reason to reveal it (like if Zen captures too much market share)...they have the money to do pure research, and every reason to do so (to stay on top). My thinking is, what have they been doing all this time - surely these little improvements to the existing Core architecture can't be taking up all their people's time - it would be stupid for Intel NOT to have an ace up their sleeve, with all their money and talent...
Posted on Reply
#25
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
HoodPerhaps Intel has been secretly working on a totally new architecture to replace "Core". and is waiting for a reason to reveal it (like if Zen captures too much market share)...they have the money to do pure research, and every reason to do so (to stay on top). My thinking is, what have they been doing all this time - surely these little improvements to the existing Core architecture can't be taking up all their people's time - it would be stupid for Intel NOT to have an ace up their sleeve, with all their money and talent...
Happened when P4 got hammered.
Posted on Reply
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