Intel on Thursday will report earnings for the second quarter after markets close. The company will hold a telephone conference with financial analysts at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

• EPS: Excluding certain items, analysts are expecting 68 cents in earnings per share, according to Thomson Reuters.
• Revenue: Analysts expect $14.41 billion in revenue for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.

Analysts’ expectations are in line with Intel’s own guidance. The company is heading into second quarter earnings after just beating expectations on EPS and falling just below expectations on revenue in the first quarter of the year.

While Intel’s Client Computing Group brings in more revenue than any other business segment, the company has been shifting away from the personal computer market, as PC shipments continue to decline. In the past few quarters, Intel has faced a fresh wave of competition from AMD’s Ryzen PC chips. Intel explored the markets for wearable devices and the maker community, but it recently closed itshealth wearables group and it has sought to kill off some Internet of Things products.

Intel’s typically high-margin Data Center Group, which includes sales to public cloud infrastructure providers and also competes with AMD, is key – last year its revenue rose 8 percent year over year, compared with the Client Computing Group’s 2 percent growth.

Earlier this month the Data Center Group unveiled its next generation Xeon Scalable chips, codenamed Purley. “We believe that Intel’s Data Center Group segment could deliver faster growth as Purley ramps,” MKM Partners managing director Ruben Roy wrote in a note last week.

Meanwhile, the company has been talking up its opportunity in artificial intelligence, thanks to acquisitions of companies like Altera, Nervana, Mobileye and Movidius.

Intel stock is down 3.5 percent since the beginning of the year.

Earlier this month Hilliard Lyons initiated coverage of Intel, writing that “while we note competition is fierce and continues to increase, we believe Intel is in a strong position to outperform peers on a risk-adjusted basis over the coming five-year time frame.”

This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.

Source: Tech CNBC
Intel set to report earnings after the closing bell