Paul Otellini
Analyst · Citi
Thanks, Kevin. I am very pleased to report another record revenue quarter for the company. As anticipated, consumer demand in the U.S. and Western Europe was soft, but consumer sales and emerging markets, and demand for both enterprise servers and clients were better than expected. The combination of a feature-led product segmentation strategy and a simplified branding structure has been very effective in improving the purchasing process for buyers, and leading us to achieve our best product mix in many years. Additionally, the rapid recovery from Cougar Point chipset issues earlier in the quarter enabled a much faster ramp of Sandy Bridge products than we anticipated in January. With regards to the tragic events in Japan, I want to first comment that all of our employees and their families are safe, for which we are very grateful. We did sustain some damage to our sales and marketing offices in Japan, but nothing major that would hinder our ability to service our customers. Our team on the ground is actively participating in relief efforts and we are deploying our technology to help connect families that have been dislocated by the earthquake and tsunami. As for our business, I want to note that we did not see any unusual changes or fluctuations to our backlog after the earthquake, nor do we anticipate any major disruptions to our supply lines moving forward. Aggregate inventory levels of the PC supply chain remained healthy and well within normal operating ranges as we enter Q2. In Q1, our customers replenished approximately half of the inventory that was depleted in Q4 primarily with new Sandy Bridge-based products. Compared to the first quarter of last year, which was a very good quarter for us, we achieved double-digit growth across every major product segment, and across every region in the world. Revenue for the Data Center business was up 32% from a year ago, with operating profit improving nearly 50%. Our other businesses also showed solid growth. The Embedded business was up 33%, NAND flash was up 17%. And I'm pleased to note that 1 of our new business areas, the Digital Home Group, grew 129% from last year and is now shipping at a rate of over 10,000 units per day into set-top boxes and smart TVs. Our PC Client business remains strong and grew 17% from last year. What we are witnessing is an explosion of computing devices that connect to the Internet, and Intel is a big part of this trend. We not only participate through selling our products into these device categories, but we also profit from the wide array of products that we sell in the build out of the data center capacity required to serve all of these devices. Turning to the Data Center Group specifically, the first quarter was another very strong quarter. DCG recorded Q1 revenue of $2.5 billion, putting us on a trajectory to reach $10 billion in revenue for this year across our server, storage and networking products. The cloud build out continues to be a major driver of growth for the company, with demand from China showing notable strength this quarter. Within the Data Center Group, the Storage business increased 45% sequentially and was up 65% from a year ago. During the quarter, we launched Sandy Bridge Xeon platforms for the single socket market, and early demand for this product has been very strong. Looking ahead, we are very bullish about our Data Center business and expect it to be a major growth driver for years to come. This past quarter, we also launched Sandy Bridge for client PCs. As I stated before, I believe that this is the very best product Intel has ever delivered to our customers. Early demand for Sandy Bridge has been outstanding. In fact, the ramp of Sandy Bridge in the channel is the fastest ramp we've ever seen, and sell through has been robust. The reviews of Sandy Bridge have been outstanding and we expect the ramp to continue on a very sharp growth trajectory. We also launched Oak Trail just last week, which is a platform designed specifically for tablets. We are seeing very good design momentum with Oak Trail across multiple operating systems. Over the course of this year, Intel will have tablet platforms that run Windows, Android and MeeGo. We remain committed to success in the Smartphone segment, and we're actively working with a large number of handset manufacturers and carriers around the world on met field-based designs. Overall, we begin 2011 with great momentum. We've added McAfee and the Wireless Division of Infineon to our portfolio, and have ambitious plans for both acquisitions going forward. We are investing and developing new products for phones and tablets, and are turning our advantages in Moore's Law and computer technology into breakthrough products for these segments. All of our major product segments are growing, and these new segments are expected to add to that growth momentum. We remain on track to begin production on our 22-nanometer silicon process technology by the end of this year. This revolutionary technology will further distance Intel from the competition across all segments of computing. Let me make 2 final comments about demand and CapEx. Like many of you, I noted that some of the third-party research firms issued reduced forecasts for PCs in 2011. I want to be clear that our views differ from some of theirs. The PC business has evolved into a global industry that is approaching 400 million units this year. While some channels like PCs sold through consumer retail outlets and mature markets have deep visibility, other channels, especially in emerging markets, are not well reflected in the forecast of third-party firms until shipments from Intel and its competitors have been reconciled. Over the last 5 years, we have put considerable effort into improving our visibility with systems like just-in-time inventory hubs for our major customers, as well as realtime metrics to monitor sales through all of our worldwide channels. As a result, we were able to call the inflection in our business in Q1 of '09, as well as predicting 2010 growth to within 1 point of accuracy. Our projections for PC segment growth in 2011 remain in the low double-digit range based on early sell-through strength we are seeing as we begin 2011 and the great reception to Sandy Bridge in both Consumer and Enterprise segments. And while it's too early to call 2012 with an improving global economy, we see no reason for growth to be materially different from what we see in 2011. Secondly, we are increasing our forecast for CapEx spending this year. This reflects the widening of our process technology lead and the incremental opportunity that advantage will provide our business. The increased CapEx is focused on both 22- and 14-nanometer capabilities. As we tailor our product plans to meet the needs of emerging notebook, tablet and phone usages, we see a need for more platform features to be integrated into the microprocessor, taking advantage of our leading edge silicon capability for power management, performance and smaller, lighter devices. These are high ROI investments and will be the foundation for significant growth opportunities ahead. With that, let me turn the call over to Stacy.