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Shares of Intel Corp. jumped gain more than 8% Friday after the chipmaker posted solid fourth-quarter financial results Thursday that beat expectations on both profit and revenue.

The company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $1.52 per share on revenue of $20.2 billion, up 8% year-over-year. That was far better than what most analysts were hoping for, with Wall Street having forecast earnings of just $1.25 per share on revenue of $19.23 billion.

Intel also posted an all-time revenue record of $72 billion for the full year, up 2% from 12 months ago. The chipmaker said the past year’s growth was driven by its “data centric” businesses, which include the Data Center Group, IoT Group, Mobileye, the Programmable Solutions Group and the Volatile Memory Solutions Group — pretty much everything that isn’t personal computers, in fact.

“In 2019, we gained share in an expanded addressable market that demands more performance to process, move and store data,” Intel Chief Executive Bob Swan (pictured) said in a statement. “One year into our long-term financial plan, we have outperformed our revenue and EPS expectations. Looking ahead, we are investing to win the technology inflections of the future, play a bigger role in the success of our customers and increase shareholder returns.”

Intel’s long-term plans envision the company becoming less reliant on its traditional PC business as it looks for new growth areas, a goal bolstered by the fact that Intel’s data-centric businesses now account for more than 50% of the firm’s revenue.

“Several years ago, we began a transformation to reposition the company to take advantage of the data revolution that is reshaping computing,” Swan added during a conference call with analysts. “To reach our multiyear goals, we will continuously focus on three key priorities: accelerating growth, improving execution and deploying our capital for attractive returns.”

Intel’s record yearly revenue was all the more impressive given the challenges it has faced this year. They include ongoing production issues that have meant it’s unable to meet demand for its products, changes in its leadership, and increased competition from its main rivals Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Nvidia Corp.

Part of the reason for Intel’s strong performance is that it continues to dominate the markets for both PC and server chips, with market shares of 80% and 90%, respectively. Indeed, Intel’s Client Computing Group, which covers those markets, saw its fourth -quarter revenue grow by 2%, to just over $10 billion.

Meanwhile, the Data Center Group raked in $7.2 billion in revenue, up 19% year-over-year, thanks to what Intel said was “robust demand” from cloud infrastructure providers.

Analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. told SiliconANGLE that the Data Center Group’s strong performance was all the more impressive because most other chip suppliers have been struggling.

“The fact is that when it comes to servers and other data center products, Intel is and likely will remain the silicon of choice for industry standard solutions built by conventional vendors, massive public clouds and hyperscale platform owners,” King said.

The Internet of Things group saw its revenue grow to $920 million, up 13% from a year ago, while Mobileye revenue came to $240 million, up 31%. The programmable solutions group, including field-programmable gate arrays or FPGAs, added $505 million more in revenue for the quarter, though that was down 17% from a year ago.

“The only disappointment in today’s announcement was the nonvolatile memory group, but that organization has long been a work in progress,” King added. “Intel continues to invest heavily in that space and I expect its performance will continue to improve over time.”

“Intel had a great quarter in spite of increased competition and supply challenges,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. “The ‘data centric’ businesses carried the day with each business driving double digit growth, except for FPGAs. Even PCs were up, which was a big surprise for me. The biggest things Intel needs to do to keep this going is to get out its next generation 10nm designs out and in-market.”

In the conference call, Swan acknowledged that Intel was still struggling to meet demand for its PC chips, but he voiced optimism that this could soon be addressed.

“Across our 14- and 10-nanometer nodes, we’re adding 25% more wafer capacity this year to deliver a high single-digit increase in PC unit volume,” he said. “This will enable us to meet market demand, deliver our 2020 financial plan and increased inventory to more normalized levels.”

For the first quarter of fiscal 2020, Intel is expecting revenue of about $19 billion. Wall Street had earlier forecast first-quarter revenue of just $17.19 billion.

Photo: 360 El Salvador/Flickr