Shares of Intel are up after the struggling American semiconductor giant posted a not-as-awful-as-expected loss of $126 million in the fourth quarter, on better-than-expected sales of $14.26 billion.
Sure, the company that jettisoned its CEO in December issued guidance that was a bit weak. But traders cheered the numbers, pushing the shares up by nearly 4% in the after-hours session.
Intel’s surge of nearly 60% this month has the iconic American chipmaker’s stock price approaching levels last seen during the dot-com era. Bloomberg noted that shares just touched their highest intraday level since the turn of the century:
“The stock rose as much as 1.5% to $69.55, topping a peak it hit on Jan. 24, 2020. The shares are up 90% this year, after soaring 84% in 2025. Intel is now roughly 8% from its all-time closing high of $74.88, established on Aug. 31, 2000.”
That’s just the most recent late-’90s-era throwback we’ve been seeing in tech shares lately. Oracle is currently pacing for its best week since late 1999.
What’s even more remarkable, however, is that Intel’s forward price-to-earnings ratio today dwarfs the premiums the market was putting on the stock during the nuttiness of the dot-com mania.
That reflects the fact that the recent run-up in Intel shares is, essentially, giving the chip giant credit for a massive turnaround that hasn’t actually happened yet.
One also might wonder if the fact that Intel is partially owned by the US government means it’s more attractive — and therefore worth a higher premium — than other chipmakers without the state imprimatur.
Still, kind of startling.
Netflix shares are down more than 10% on Friday morning.
Eli Lilly rose after preliminary numbers cited by Wall Street analysts showed strong uptake of its new weight-loss pill.
The FDA approved Foundayo on April 1 and shipments began on April 9. In its first week, roughly 1,400 US prescriptions were written for the drug, according to IQVIA data cited by Deustche Bank analysts in a Friday note.
Novo Nordisk, Lilly’s rival in the GLP-1 market, released its GLP-1 pill earlier this year, and early signs show that it’s expanding the market, inviting patients who were turned off by weekly injections. Novo’s pill had a stronger first week than Lilly’s, with its Wegovy pill hitting 3,071 US prescriptions in the first four days after its launch on January 5.
Lilly’s pill has an advantage over Novo’s, which is that it can be taken at any time of day, with or without food. Lilly disclosed in a February regulatory filing that it had $1.5 billion worth of prelaunch inventory ready ahead of the FDA approval — which is about as much as analysts polled by FactSet expect it to sell this year.
Novo Nordisk, Lilly’s rival in the GLP-1 market, released its GLP-1 pill earlier this year, and early signs show that it’s expanding the market, inviting patients who were turned off by weekly injections. Novo’s pill had a stronger first week than Lilly’s, with its Wegovy pill hitting 3,071 US prescriptions in the first four days after its launch on January 5.
Lilly’s pill has an advantage over Novo’s, which is that it can be taken at any time of day, with or without food. Lilly disclosed in a February regulatory filing that it had $1.5 billion worth of prelaunch inventory ready ahead of the FDA approval — which is about as much as analysts polled by FactSet expect it to sell this year.
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