ANOTHER VIEW

Here is a recent report from multimedia financial-services company the Motley Fool: Shares of microchip giant Intel have fallen quite a bit over the past year, presenting a nice opportunity for investors. What’s going on? Well, some worry that the market for PC systems is shrinking, that Intel has failed to stake a serious claim on the mobilecomputing market that’s replacing PCs and that Apple is considering ditching Intel’s chips in many of its machines. The risks facing Intel are substantial, but with or without direct involvement in tablets and smartphones, those mobile gadgets will always need to be fed data from large server systems — which happens to be Intel’s bread and butter. The rumors of Intel’s death are hugely exaggerated. With a P/E ratio recently below 9, the stock is ridiculously undervalued when you consider Intel’s fortresslike market presence. On top of that, Intel has a tendency to buy back a ton of shares when the stock gets crazy cheap. There’s a $6.3 billion buyback authorization on the table today, and the board of directors would be happy to expand it as necessary. That’s the kind of opportunistic buyback that creates shareholder value rather than destroying it and a serious rocket booster for long-term share prices. Meanwhile, the stock offers a fat dividend yield above 4 percent.