Intel says will invest through recession
Intel (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) will continue to invest in products and technologies even though it sees that a U.S. financial meltdown is likely to affect the emerging markets that are crucial for its growth, its chairman said on Tuesday.
“I think you’d have to be prudent and assume that if the financial marketplace melts down there’s going to be some impact but nobody’s predicting that, nobody knows how big it’s going to be,” Chairman Craig Barrett told Reuters journalists.
“The only thing we can do is look at that part of our future destiny that we can control, and that’s our investment in the future, in the products we create and the technologies we create,” he said on a visit to Reuters.
“We’ve always had the attitude that you have to make that investment in good times and bad,” he said. “It’s R&D, capital, marketing-intensive, and we’re just like a blind greyhound, we just continue to race down the track.”
Of its $38.3 billion 2007 revenue, the world’s biggest chipmaker spent $5.8 billion on research and development and $5 billion on capital items such as property, plants and equipment overnight payday loans.
“You can’t save your way out of a recession, you have to invest your way out, and so we’ve always kept a rainy day plan to accommodate that,” Barrett said, adding that Intel had a financial cash cushion of about $10 billion for that purpose.
Barrett said Intel’s creditworthiness meant it should be able to make acquisitions if the chance arose, even given the current turmoil in financial markets.
Intel has an A+ credit rating from Standard and Poor’s.