After a tumultuous few years, Intel’s shares rose by up to 20pc last night as its Q1 results exceeded Wall Street expectations.
Intel’s first-quarter revenue was $13.6bn, up 7pc year-on-year, and it is forecasting second-quarter revenue of $13.8bn to $14.8bn, surpassing market expectation, as its outlook improves having fallen behind competitors like Nvidia.
“The next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. “This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings. With a solid foundation in place, we are addressing this opportunity by listening to our customers and driving their success with our technical expertise and differentiated IP.
“This deliberate reset to how we operate drove a sixth consecutive quarter of revenue above our expectations, as well as new and deepened relationships with strategic partners,” he added.
One major partner could be Elon Musk, as he said on the car manufacturer’s earnings call earlier this week that he plans to use Intel’s forthcoming 14A process to produce chips at the Terafab chip complex in Austin, Texas which, when complete, will produce chips for use by SpaceX and Tesla.
According to CNBC, on Intel’s earnings call yesterday (23 April) Tan said he and Musk “share a strong conviction that global semiconductor supply is not keeping pace with the rapid acceleration in demand”, and that together they would look for “unconventional ways to improve manufacturing efficiency”.
Here in Ireland, Intel announced earlier this month it had reached an agreement to repurchase a 49pc stake in its Fab 34 manufacturing facility in Leixlip, Co Kildare, via a partnership with asset manager Apollo Global Management.
The deal, which will be valued at $14.2bn, is expected to be funded through cash on hand and proceeds from the issuance of new debt of approximately $6.5bn. With work beginning in 2019, Fab 34 was designed to be an advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility. In 2024, it was decided that Intel would sell a 49pc stake in Fab 34 to Apollo.
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