“It was the best quarter in the company’s 51-year history,” says Intel CEO Bob Swan. “Everything was stronger than we expected this quarter. If you think about where we were simply 90 days ago we had a view that the quarter would be roughly $18 billion but we closed at $19.2 billion. That’s $1.2 billion higher than we expected.”

Bob Swan, CEO of Intel, discusses in an interview on CNBC how the company was able to end the third quarter better than any other quarter in its 51-year history:

Best Quarter In the Company’s 51-Year History

Everything was stronger than we expected this quarter. If you think about where we were simply 90 days ago we had a view that the quarter would be roughly $18 billion but we closed at $19.2 billion. That’s $1.2 billion higher than we expected. We saw strength across the board. It was the best quarter in the company’s 51-year history. 

The data-centric collection of businesses, which is a very important part of our growth story, set records. DCG was a record quarter. Our memory business had a record quarter. Our IoT business had a record quarter. Our Mobileye business had a record quarter. We really saw very strong growth across the board as we went from Q2 to Q3.

Because of that, we raised our full-year outlook by $1.2 billion. We took earnings up and we raised our cashflow outlook by a billion dollars as well. We’re on pace for our fourth record year in a row. We feel good momentum going to the second half of the year.