Intel's Stock Jumps 18.8% - But What's In Its Future?

Intel's stock jumped nearly 19% this week. 'However, in the past year through Wednesday's close, Intel stock had fallen 53%,' notes Investor's Business Daily:

The appointment of Lip-Bu Tan as CEO is a 'good start' but Intel has significant challenges, Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said in a client note. Those challenges include delays in its server chip product line, a very competitive PC chip market, lack of a compelling AI chip offering, and over $10 billion in losses in its foundry business over the past 12 months. There is 'no quick fix' for those issues, he said.

'There are things you can do,' a Columbia business school associate professor tells the Wall Street Journal in a video interview, 'but it's going to be incremental, and it's going to be extremely risky... They will try to be competitive in the foundry manufacturing space,' but 'It takes very aggressive investments.'

Meanwhile, TSMC is exploring a joint venture where they'd operate Intel's factories, even pitching the idea to AMD, Nvidia, Broadcam, and Qualcomm, according to Reuters. (They add that Intel 'reported a 2024 net loss of $18.8 billion, its first since 1986,' and talked to multiple sources 'familiar with' talks about Intel's future).
Multiple companies have expressed interest in buying parts of Intel, but two of the four sources said the U.S. company has rejected discussions about selling its chip design house separately from the foundry division. Qualcomm has exited earlier discussions to buy all or part of Intel, according to those people and a separate source. Intel board members have backed a deal and held negotiations with TSMC, while some executives are firmly opposed, according to two sources.

'They say Lip-Bu Tan is the best hope to fix Intel — if Intel can be fixed at all,' writes the Wall Street Journal:
He brings two decades of semiconductor industry experience, relationships across the sector, a startup mindset and an obsession with AI...and basketball. He also comes with tricky China business relationships, underscoring Silicon Valley's inability to sever itself from one of America's top adversaries... [Intel's] stock has lost two-thirds of its value in four short years as Intel sat out the AI boom...
Manufacturing chips is an enormous expense that Intel can't currently sustain, say industry leaders and analysts. Former board members have called for a split-up. But a deal to sell all or part of Intel to competitors seems to be off the table for the immediate future, according to bankers. A variety of early-stage discussions with Broadcom, Qualcomm, GlobalFoundries and TSMC in recent months have failed to go anywhere, and so far seem unlikely to progress. The company has already hinted at a more likely outcome: bringing in outside financial backers, including customers who want a stake in the manufacturing business...
Tan has likely no more than a year to turn the company around, said people close to the company. His decades of investing in startups and running companies — he founded a multinational venture firm and was CEO of chip design company Cadence Design Systems for 13 years — provide indications of how Tan will tackle this task in the early days: by cutting expenses, moving quickly and trying to turn Intel back into an engineering-first company. 'In areas where we are behind the competition, we need to take calculated risks to disrupt and leapfrog,' Tan said in a note to Intel employees on Wednesday. 'And in areas where our progress has been slower than expected, we need to find new ways to pick up the pace....'

Many take this culture reset to also mean significant cuts at Intel, which already shed about 15,000 jobs last year. 'He is brave enough to adjust the workforce to the size needed for the business today,' said Reed Hundt, a former Intel board member who has known Tan since the 1990s.

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