Intel Corp forecast revenues well above Wall Street's targets, sending its shares higher in after hours trade.

International Business Machines results also outpaced expectations and it raised its full-year profit forecast.

Commentary:

Intel:

DOUG FREEDMAN, ANALYST, GLEACHER & CO

It's actually a question of how did management. Why did they guide where they guided, if this is what they could do and people called it a tough environment. My thought is what we are really seeing here -- Q1 last year was a big surprise as well. I think something is changing in terms of global seasonality that is driving it.

The world had known they were introducing a new product -- sandy bridge. It shows Q3 and Q4 were really sub-seasonal they were really disappointing numbers.

The result is that we cleaned all the inventory out of the channel. This is a bit of, we like your new product, we want your new product, now that you have it available start shipping it to us even though the build production over in Taiwan was lower and less than expected.

There is no denying the data points were not good. I do think the data points out of Taiwan are becoming less and less indicative of the market. I think there is more production taking place in mainland China by people that we are not familiar with tracking or don't allow us to.

We don't have the same visibility we might have had.

HENDI SUSANTO, ANALYST, GABELLI & CO

Overall it's very positive. Gross margin is very strong.

Despite the growth of tablets and mobile devices, people don't realize that at the back end, it still requires microprocessors. And Intel has 80 percent of that market.

This is very positive for the small players in the semiconductor business that have a presence in the PC supply chain. It is also positive for the semiconductor equipment industry as Intel increased its guidance.

KEVIN CASSIDY, ANALYST, STIFEL NICOLAUS

They are stunning numbers, especially that it was the PC client group that was so strong to them. Every region of the world to them was up quarter over quarter. It's quite a surprise to the market. There have been industry reports that say PC growth has been down year over year. Forward guidance looks good also.

Overall, there are some PC products that get manufactured in Japan: probably no more exposure than any other company.

One other thing, a question we might have: gross margins were expected 61 pct this quarter, their guidance shows 61 pct next quarter. We would have thought that gross margins would have moved up. On Sandy Bridge, they had to redesign that chip, that cost them $400 million Q1. We're not sure what else is happening there.

The market is going to be just shocked at the top line numbers.

WIN CRAMER, ANALYST, AVIAN SECURITIES:

It's impressive. Overall very good numbers, well ahead of Street expectations.

The PC Client Group revenue was much higher than anyone anticipated. Everyone expected some poor numbers there due to the Sandy Bridge delays in that particular segment of the business.

The revenue for McAfee, Infineon wireless was less than $500 million. Even if you take that out they still performed well.

ALEX GAUNA, ANALYST, JMP SECURITIES

A nice upside surprise. What is most telling: they were able to deliver such a powerful topline with average selling prices up across the board. If there was anything I would poke a hole in, I would like to see a better gross margin profile, especially with the McAfee acquisition.

IBM:

KIM CAUGHEY FORREST, SENIOR ANALYST, FORT PITT CAPITAL GROUP

Growth in North America was very strong, probably stronger than I had anticipated and it's great the company was able to hold gross profit margins relatively high.

The concern is they didn't really guide a whole lot higher than they had originally for the year, if you take into account the earnings surprise. That's a little disappointing.

I'm very interested in some sort of detailed commentary from the company in terms of what their short term signings are, that's always an indicator for the longer term growth of the company.

TED PARRISH, CO-PORTFOLIO MANAGER, HENSSLER EQUITY FUND

These numbers shows IBM's resiliency. They beat on just about every area I had hoped. They had strong bookings still, backlogs growing. Margins are holding up across the board.

It's a margins story, and an emerging markets growth story too. Seems they're firing on all cylinders. Japan was a concern since they have so much exposure but what strikes me is they raised their guidance for the year, which gives me confidence that the Japan situation didn't affect them as much as you would think.

RICHARD SICHEL, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER AT PHILADELPHIA TRUST CO

The earnings beat by a decent amount. Looks like gross margins were pretty much in line with expectations. (Japan) wasn't really a detriment, not a real consideration going ahead. All the numbers I see look good.

FRED HICKEY, EDITOR, HIGH TECH STRATEGIST

Everything looks to be in line, that is what is to be expected. Revenue was up more than expected. I didn't expect any problems. They don't have the component issues that others do -- like Seagate today -- that were affected by the Japanese earthquake.

It was a good report but it wasn't unexpected.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba and Yinka Adegoke in New York and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco)

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