INTEL, Ireland's biggest high technology employer, has reported strong growth in the second quarter of the year, with net income up from $879 million (£406 million) a year ago to $1.04 billion (£650 million) in the second quarter of 1996.
As a result, Intel's 44,000 employees worldwide, including the 2,800 staff at its manufacturing plant in Leixlip, Co Kildare, are to share bonuses for the first half of the year equivalent to 10.2 days pay.
The total payout to Intel employees worldwide will be approximately $77 million, an average of $1,750 (£1,100) per employee.
Intel's president and chief executive officer, Mr Andrew Grove, said that the second quarter of 1996 represented a milestone for the group, with net income exceeding $1 billion in a quarter for the first time.
Sales in the second quarter were $4.6 billion, up from $3.9 billion in the second quarter of 1995 and a fraction down on sales in the first quarter of the current year.
Mr Grove said that it had been a tough quarter for the industry, but that Intel had still been able to set new records for shipments of microprocessors. "This record suggests that demand for high performance personal computers is fundamentally healthy," he said.
Intel expects sales in the third quarter to be similar to the $4.6 billion in the second quarter.
For the first six months of the year, sales jumped from $7.45 billion to $91.62 billion with profits up from $1.77 billion to $1.94 billion.
Intel has 2,800 staff at its huge plant in Leixlip, Co Kildare, while a further 800 people are employed full time on site by subcontractors.
It is currently building its second wafer fabrication plant in Leixlip a £930 million investment, which is expected to create another 2,000 jobs. Intel, which has already invested more than £1 billion at its two operations in Kildare, produces more than half of its Pentium processors in Ireland.
Earlier this week the company announced that it was changing its price cutting strategy on Pentium chips in an attempt to encourage personal computer makers to buy chips sooner so that they can satisfy pre-Christmas demand.
The company hopes the move will create a more stable pricing and ordering environment during the final quarter.
