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The Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities may have hurt Intel Corp.’s public image, but the company’s earnings are stronger than ever.

Intel released its first-quarter earnings today, which soared past analyst expectations and bumped the company’s share values by more than 5 percent in after-hours trading.

Update: After a good night’s sleep, investors changed their minds Friday, as shares were actually falling 1 percent in midday trading. The concern appeared to be whether Intel’s gains are sustainable, especially given sustainability of the company’s results as well as challenges with its new chip production technology.

Intel reported a profit before certain items such as stock compensation of 87 cents per share, well over the 72 cents forecast by analysts. Revenue rose 9 percent from a year ago, to $16.07 billion, beating analysts’ expectations by nearly a billion dollars.

Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich (pictured) said today during a call with investors that nearly half the company’s revenue last quarter came from its data center business segment, which grew by 25 percent from a year ago, to $5.2 billion. This segment includes chip sales for data centers as well as for emerging computing platforms such as self-driving cars.

Intel’s Client Computing Group remained its biggest segment, bringing in more than $8.2 billion in revenue last quarter, but it saw minimal growth compared with other segments.

“The strength of Intel’s business underscores my confidence in our strategy and the unrelenting demand for compute performance fueled by the growth of data,” Krzanich said in a prepared statement.

During today’s conference call, Krzanich briefly mentioned the serious vulnerabilities in Intel’s chips that came to light at the beginning of the year, which could potentially allow hackers to take control of a user’s PC. However, the CEO focused on the company’s response to the issues rather than the vulnerabilities themselves.

“I am pleased with our progress and proud of how Intel and industry partners addressed this issue collaboratively, with transparency and customer-first urgency,” Krzanich told analysts. “We’re delivering against our security-first pledge, and we’ve now rolled out microcode-based mitigations for all Intel products launched over the last nine years that require protection against Spectre and Meltdown. We’ll also begin delivering both client and data center products with the hardware-based mitigations later this year.”

The Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities plagued chips made by a number of providers, but Intel’s products were more seriously affected by the security flaws. There were also reports suggesting that Krzanich knew about the vulnerabilities when he sold off millions of dollars in Intel stock shortly before the information became public. Both Intel and Krzanich denied those reports.

Photo: Intel Free Press/flickr