INTEL, THE world’s largest chipmaker, reduced its fourth quarter revenue forecast by about $1 billion, citing a shortage of hard-disk drives for personal computers.
The company now expects revenue to be $13.7 billion, plus or minus $300 million, compared with a previous estimate of $14.7 billion, give or take $500 million.
While PC sales will rise in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, customers are cutting back on their stockpiles of parts because they expect hard-disk shortages to reduce output, Intel said.
Those shortages, resulting from the worst flooding in Thailand in 70 years, will continue into the first quarter, the chipmaker said.
Shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company fell 3.7 percent to $24.09 at 10.09am New York time after declining 5 per cent, the biggest intraday drop since August 18th.
Rival Advanced Micro Devices fell 4.2 per cent.
Intel, whose microprocessors power more than 80 per cent of the world’s PCs, is cutting the forecast after other chipmakers indicated the industry was recovering from the floods in Thailand. – (Bloomberg)
