Intel boss Pat Gelsinger warns of chip shortages until at least 2024

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Intel boss Pat Gelsinger: Demand from the industry

Photo: Rod Lamkey / dpa

According to chip giant Intel, the current semiconductor bottlenecks could still be felt painfully in the next two years.

The problems with the production capacity and the availability of necessary machines are likely to last at least until 2024, said Intel boss Pat Gelsinger when presenting the latest quarterly figures.

Intel felt the slackening of the corona boom in the PC industry in the past quarter.

Sales fell seven percent year-on-year to $18.4 billion.

An important factor for the decline was the shrinking of the business with notebook chips by 14 percent to just under six billion dollars.

While corporate interest remains strong, there has been a dip in cheaper consumer and educational PCs, Gelsinger said.

Even with the forecast of around 18 billion dollars in the current quarter, Intel remained below the expectations of the analysts.

Lockdown in Shanghai with low impact

However, the company expects demand to pick up again in the second half of the year and is therefore sticking to its estimate of $76 billion for the full year.

The consequences of the corona lockdowns in Shanghai for the industry should remain manageable if the measures are lifted soon, said CFO David Zinsner in a conference call with analysts.

The PC market, which had experienced a boom since 2020 with increased working and learning at home in the corona pandemic, had run out of breath in the quarter.

According to calculations by the market research company IDC, sales of personal computers fell by around five percent year-on-year.

In contrast, Intel was able to increase chips for data centers again: Sales grew by 22 percent to a good six billion dollars.

Gelsinger also wants to make Intel a large contract manufacturer for other chip suppliers.

This area increased sales within a year from 103 to 283 million dollars - and wrote an operating loss of 31 million dollars.

At the same time, Intel wants to build new factories in Germany, among other places, and is targeting investments of 27 billion dollars for this this year.

Overall, net income jumped from $3.4 billion to $8.1 billion.

The stock fell about 4 percent in after-hours trading.

Analysts had also expected more sales in the past quarter.

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