Nobody likes Intel, but they sure ain’t selling it
The stock isn’t falling.
Reviews of Intel’s not-as-horrible-as-expected earnings yesterday are rolling in. And they’re not great.
Barclays says:
“Significant March revenue miss, combined with structural margin impairments gets 2025 off to another rocky start.”
BofA says:
“Too big to fix unless products, manufacturing improve.”
UBS says:
“Not much to get excited about; remain on sidelines.”
In fact, the share of Wall Street sell-side consiglieres with “buy” ratings on Intel has touched some of the lowest levels on record recently. Less than 7% are now Intel bulls, a contrast that’s especially marked if one looks back to the unified bullishness Wall Street once had for the stock during the heyday of the dot-com boom.
None of this should be much of a surprise. The nearly 70% drop in Intel’s stock price over the last five years has vaporized roughly $200 billion in market value, along with any confidence that management can turn things around. Meanwhile, other semiconductor stocks such as Nvidia and Broadcom that are optimized for AI have posted stunning gains.
Yet there are some indications that sentiment on Intel has gotten so negative that there might be nowhere for it to go but up.
Case in point, despite the underwhelming numbers it issued yesterday, Intel’s shares are essentially flat on the day. Several analyst notes mentioned the fact that traders and analysts are both attuned to the chance that Intel’s remains could be swallowed up by another rival. Such a transaction could provide a last profitable little pop for owners who are for some reason or another still hanging on to Intel shares, perhaps making them less likely to dump the stock at this point.
After all, what more do they have to lose.
