Intel earnings Q1 2018

Intel reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat analysts’ expectations on Thursday. Shares jumped as much as 8 percent after the announcement.

Here’s how the company did compared with what Wall Street expected:

• Earnings: 87 cents per share vs. 72 cents per share forecast by Thomson Reuters
• Revenue: $16.07 billion vs. $15.08 billion forecast by Thomson Reuters

The company’s total revenue for the quarter was up 9 percent year over year, with earnings up 32 percent since the first quarter of 2017.

Intel’s biggest segment, the Client Computing Group, brought in $8.2 billion in the first quarter, up 3 percent year-over-year. But it is in the data-centric businesses that Intel has seen the largest and most rapid growth.

The Data Center Group, Intel’s second largest segment, reported $5.2 billion in revenue, a 24 percent increase since last year. Just last quarter, the segment grew by 20 percent. The data portions of Intel’s business, which include processors for artificial intelligence, cloud and data center offerings and Internet of Things solutions, accounted for an all-time high 49 percent of Intel’s total revenue.

“Our Q1 results demonstrated continued momentum in our transformation from a PC-centric company to a data-centric company,” CFO Bob Swan said in a call with investors.

Intel also said its autonomous driving company, Mobileye, began operating autonomous test vehicles in Israel with plans to expand elsewhere within the coming months.

With Mobileye, as well as expanding data business segments, CEO Brian Krzanich said the chipmaker is positioning itself “to be the end-to-end platform provider for the new data world and a leader in artificial intelligence and autonomous revolution.”

Intel’s second quarter guidance came about in-line with Street expectations. The company also said it was raising its full-year revenue to $67.5 billion, up $2.5 billion from previous guidance.

Last quarter, the company faced pressure around its handling of the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities, which were disclosed in January. Although the issues affected chips made by several companies, the Meltdown issue had an especially large impact on Intel’s processors.

Intel pared losses in wake of Spectre and Meltdown, and analysts look to the chipmaker for strong performance to pull up the semiconductor sector.

Shares of Intel are up 14.8 percent year-to-date.