The stock of Intel Corp has fallen on very heavy trading, a day after the world's largest maker of computer chips reported lower-than-expected earnings for the latest quarter. Intel was off $5.69 at $86.125 on a big volume of more than 34 million shares in trading on the Nasdaq market. The company's European headquarters is in Leixlip, Co Kildare.

The company said late on Tuesday that its third-quarter earnings rose 19 per cent, which was well below analysts' expectations, and it also warned that its fourth-quarter revenues will be only "slightly" above the third quarter. Citing slower-than-expected flash memory sales and high Pentium II production costs, Intel said it earned $1.57 billion, or 88 cents a share, compared with earnings in the 1996 third quarter of $1.31 billion, or 74 cents. Revenues rose 20 per cent to $6.16 billion from $5.14 billion.