Reporting fourth-quarter earnings after market close Thursday, the company posted a profit of $2.3 billion, or 40 cents a share, compared with a profit of $234 million, or four cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Revenue was $10.6 billion, up from $8.2 billion for the same quarter in the year-earlier period.

A strong showing for Intel and one that blows the doors off consensus estimates that called for 30 cents a share in profit on revenue of $10.17 billion. And don’t forget that these results include a European Commission fine of $1.45 billion and a $1.25 billion settlement agreement with AMD (AMD).

“Curb your enthusiasm [for Intel]” Bank of America (BAC) analyst Sumit Dhanda told clients in a research note issued Wednesday that warned of a revenue miss from the chip behemoth. Curb your enthusiasm? Not likely after today’s results.

“Intel’s strong 2009 results reflect our investment in industry-leading manufacturing and product innovation,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in an earnings release. “This strategy has enabled us to generate unprecedented operating efficiencies while growing our traditional businesses and creating exciting new market opportunities, even in difficult economic times.”

Taking a wide view, Otellini adds, “Our ability to weather this business cycle demonstrates that microprocessors are indispensable in our modern world. Looking forward, we plan to deliver the benefits of computing to an expanding set of products, markets and customers.”

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2010, Intel expects revenue of $9.7 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Evidently, the PC market is back.

Reporting fourth-quarter earnings after market close Thursday, the company posted a profit of $2.3 billion, or 40 cents a share, compared with a profit of $234 million, or four cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Revenue was $10.6 billion, up from $8.2 billion for the same quarter in the year-earlier period.

A strong showing for Intel and one that blows the doors off consensus estimates that called for 30 cents a share in profit on revenue of $10.17 billion. And don’t forget that these results include a European Commission fine of $1.45 billion and a $1.25 billion settlement agreement with AMD (AMD).

“Curb your enthusiasm [for Intel]” Bank of America (BAC) analyst Sumit Dhanda told clients in a research note issued Wednesday that warned of a revenue miss from the chip behemoth. Curb your enthusiasm? Not likely after today’s results.

“Intel’s strong 2009 results reflect our investment in industry-leading manufacturing and product innovation,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in an earnings release. “This strategy has enabled us to generate unprecedented operating efficiencies while growing our traditional businesses and creating exciting new market opportunities, even in difficult economic times.”

Taking a wide view, Otellini adds, “Our ability to weather this business cycle demonstrates that microprocessors are indispensable in our modern world. Looking forward, we plan to deliver the benefits of computing to an expanding set of products, markets and customers.”

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2010, Intel expects revenue of $9.7 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Evidently, the PC market is back.

“We are downgrading our view on the sector given unfavorable indications from our cyclical framework,” he writes. “In particular, our industry model suggests that following a period of rapid replenishment of inventory and normalization of semi shipments to true consumption levels, inventories in the supply chain are approaching a level suggesting a modest overshoot versus equilibrium levels. While we see limited risk to near-term estimates, we think the longer this persists the great the risk of a correction in the supply chain. Barring a sharp upturn in the global economies, this, in our view, renders the risk reward associated with ownership of chip stocks unattractive.”

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He says longer-term headwinds remain, but that there are potential catalysts in the short-to-intermediate term, including improved free cash flow generation with the potential to reach break-even by Q4, reduced stress on the balance sheet as it finally shifts to an asset-lite strategy, and improved product uptake.

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