Intel (INTC) is set to report its third quarter financial results after the bell on Thursday as Wall Street looks for signals on the future of its struggling manufacturing business.
Analysts expect Intel to report $13.15 billion in quarterly revenue, lower than the $13.28 billion it reported last year, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates. They project the chipmaker will record adjusted earnings per share of $0.01, which would mark a swing from a loss of $0.46 during the same period in 2024.
Intel’s stock price has surged more than 60% since its last quarterly report in July. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) is up just 7% in that time frame.
The upswing follows mass layoffs at the company and a slew of high-profile investments in Intel from the US government, Nvidia (NVDA), and SoftBank (9984.T). The investments bolstered both its balance sheet and investor hopes for a turnaround under new chief executive Lip-Bu Tan.
Still, analysts and investors say those investments do little to change the state of Intel’s struggling third-party manufacturing business, known as foundry.
“Intel’s stock is trading more on external factors than fundamentals right now,” TD Cowen analyst Joshua Buchalter wrote in a note to investors earlier this month. “Recently inked deals with [Nvidia] and the [US government] are unlikely to have an impact on the roadmap (product or foundry) for some time.”
Wall Street fears that heavy spending on the relatively new segment, launched in 2021, may not pay off. So far, the business has failed to attract substantial commitments from outside customers.
Policymakers, however, are heavily invested in the company’s success due to its geopolitical significance: Most of the world’s computing chips are made in Taiwan, and Intel is the only US-based, large-scale advanced semiconductor manufacturer.
Analysts project that the manufacturing arm will report an operating loss of $2.2 billion, an improvement from the $5.8 billion loss in the previous year.
Complicating the path ahead for the business is the fact that Intel is no longer promoting its latest 18A chip production process as a way to attract outside customers. Initial reports indicated both Nvidia and Broadcom (AVGO) were testing the technology, but deals with the firms have failed to materialize.
Instead, Intel has shifted to primarily using 18A for its own internal products, including its Core Ultra series 3 chips for consumers and its Xeon 6+ next-generation data center chip, which is slated to launch in the first half of 2026.
finance.yahoo.com
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