Investors are under-confident when it comes to Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) stocks. They are not seeing any upside potential of this stock. Analysts are also expecting a downside in performance. On average, analysts are predicting revenue to surge 4.3 percent year over year from 2013. However, this estimate could prove wrong based on two possibilities, says a report on Seeking alpha by Ashraf Eassa.
Why the Estimates are Wrong
The estimated average is very low at $53.58. This is strikingly below “low single digit revenue growth” estimates, given in the full year guidance. Hence, the base is not known over which the growth was to be measured.
The growth estimations of 4.3 percent from 2013 are valid to an extent but then it is very low from the high single digit/low double digit growth.
Why Upside can be Expected
The stock has some potential to hit upside as the projection of 2013 is considerably below the actual guidance of 2014. The analysts here are missing the various growth catalysts which will contribute to the growth in 2014.
The largest chipmaker launched “Clover Trail” towards the end of 2012, which was a 32nm “Atom” processor integrated together in a new, low power SoC for the tablet market. The sales of this SoC have been impressive so far, and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) has acquired a 6.75 percent share in the branded tablet market. However, “Clover Trail” OS is still not integrated into Android tablets in any prime way. The company is ready to rollover “Baytrail”, which is based on the “Silvermont” core, through the company will aim more at tapping more market space in the tablet market and to lock its dominating position in Windows 8 tablet. Additionally, it will also penetrate its way in the Android Google Tablet market.
The company has tried its hand in the smartphone market since 2012 but could not strike any major success. The share of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) in the smartphone market is a meager 0.2 percent. This is pretty obvious considering the fact that Intel lacks the LTE solution, which takes all the merchant chip business to QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) at the high end. Companies like Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94) (KRX:005930) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) use primarily in-house chips.
The dual core 32nm Atom Z2580 is fast but lags behind QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) whom vendors believe in, and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) does not give any valid reason to vendors to swap Qualcomm with Intel. There are strong possibilities, however, that the scenario may change in 2014.
Intel Corporation (INTC) Development
The most positive development for Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is that just as tablets will add up to the revenues for the company in 2014, so will smartphones. “Merrifield” from Intel will be released in Q1 2014, as announced by the company in IDF 2013 Beijing.
Apart from these, the report also gives other reasons of why the author believes an upside is possible for Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC). He ends the article by saying the chip maker’s shares are “dramatically undervalued” compared to the long run prospects of the company.
