$1 Billion Short: Hard Drive Shortage Impacts Intel's Q4

Intel today told investors that the global hard drive shortage caused by the Thailand flood has forced the company to reduce its fourth quarter outlook to a midpoint of $13.7 billion, down from a previous midpoint estimate of $14.7 billion.

Intel's stock was down about 4.7 percent as a result of the announcement. According to the company, sales of PCs will be up sequentially for the quarter, but there are not as many sales into the supply chain as chip inventories are reduced due to the supply disruption in the hard drive industry. Intel expects hard drive shortages to persist through the first quarter and continued improvement of supply during the first half of the year.

There is no consistent opinion from analysts when hard drive supply will be catching up with demand again. IDC, for example, expects some impact to last into 2013, while IHS said that currently added emergency production volumes could lead to a hard drive oversupply by the end of 2012 once the normal production volume is available again.

Several other chip companies were dragged down by the announcement as well. AMD fell by about 4.9 percent, Nvidia by 4.0 percent, Micron by 3.3 percent, Broadcom by 3.1 percent and Texas Instruments by 2.8 percent.

Related:

• 3.8M Fewer PCs to be Sold in Q1'12 Due to Limited HDD Supply