Morgan Stanley Meets With Intel CFO, Remains Underweight

Morgan Stanley on Friday issued a report on Intel Corporation INTC after a meeting with company CFO Stacy Smith. Morgan Stanley currently rates Intel as Underweight.

Analysts Joe Moore, Craig Hettenbach and Alvin Lim wrote, "For the full year the company still expects flat growth in PC CPU units at the midpoint,citing a more compelling Windows 10, as well as the Skylake (new architecture on 14 nm) ramp in 2h15.While we are looking forward to those catalysts, we are a bit more cautious, looking for desktops to decline 6.2% this year, notebooks to decline 1.6% (both in line with our hardware team's forecast), and we expect microprocessors to undercut PCs by a few percent."

A softer Chinese market and weaker pricing also concerns Morgan Stanley as the firm places Intel's earnings estimates as slightly below consensus. Positively Intel's data center remains strong, however the stock is likely to continue to be under pressure.

Shares of Intel recently traded at $33.86, down 0.26 percent.