Intel shares fall 22% as weak sales outlook dents turnaround

Intel shares fell a fifth on in after hours trading on Thursday after it gave much weaker than expected financial forecasts, breaking a run of strong earnings reports this year that had built confidence in the US chipmaking champion’s turnaround.

The company projected revenue of between $15 billion and $16 billion (€13.4-€14.3 billion) for the current quarter, less than the $17 billion Wall Street anticipated. Its sales in the three months to September were in line with expectations at $16.5 billion.

Intel also warned investors that its closely watched gross margins would fall to a much worse than expected 37 per cent as it faces higher costs from an industry-wide shortage of memory chips.

Its shares fell about 22 per cent in after-hours trading.

Global technology stocks fell on Friday on the disappointing update from Intel and also from Google parent, Alphabet, in revent days.

Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei 225 index closed down 2.1 per cent, with OpenAI investor SoftBank slipping 6 per cent to bring losses from its June peak to 48 per cent. US stocks are set for sizeable drops when Wall Street opens.

The disappointing Intel results underscore how much it relies on its traditional PC chip business, using these revenues to fund its bet-the-farm effort to build a US chip-manufacturing champion that can rival Taiwan’s TSMC.

Intel said the PC market had suffered more than it anticipated from component shortages as data centre builders outbid other parts of the electronics supply chain.

Global PC shipments fell 21 per cent in the third quarter of this year as component costs pushed up prices, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

Apple, which has blamed price increases this year on a memory chip supply crisis, reports earnings on Monday, with some analysts expecting a weaker sales forecast for the holiday season.

Intel chief financial officer David Zinsner said a “slowdown” in the PC market would continue at least into the first half of next year, although he said 2027 was shaping up to be a “growth year” given the demand for AI chips.

Intel, which employs just under 5,000 people in Ireland, in July announced a further €5 billion investment to upgrade advanced manufacturing capabilities at its Leixlip, Co Kildare plant in a move that is expected to create hundreds of new jobs.

The group has poured €30 billion into the Leixlip campus over the past four decades.

The faltering financial performance deals a blow to Intel’s turnaround efforts under chief executive Lip-Bu Tan.

He has led a push to bolster the company’s balance sheet after years of decline under his predecessor Pat Gelsinger, driven by unchecked spending on manufacturing facilities that are yet to draw big external customers and compete with TSMC.

Intel shares are up more than 140 per cent since the start of the year. But they had fallen more than 20 per cent over the past month before Thursday’s earnings, hit by broader investor concerns around rising inflation and the artificial intelligence trade.

Intel’s rebound gathered momentum after Donald Trump’s administration last year threw its support behind the group’s efforts to become the only US company capable of manufacturing advanced semiconductors.

The government struck a deal to convert billions of dollars in federal manufacturing grants into a 10 per cent stake in the business, which was followed by multibillion-dollar investments from Nvidia and SoftBank.

Elon Musk has said SpaceX and Tesla will collaborate with Intel on his ambitious “Terafab” facility in Texas. Although there are few details about the plan, it has also helped to shake off the narrative of Intel’s decline.

Thursday’s results were Intel’s first earnings report after it issued $23 billion of new stock in August, looking to capitalise on a soaring share price after it posted its fastest growth in 15 years in July.

Intel’s product business, which sells the server and PC chips it designs, brought in $15.4 billion in revenue in the third quarter, in line with expectations. Its chip manufacturing operations, known as the foundry, reported revenue of $6.7 billion.

Intel is facing mounting competition in the PC processor chip space from rival AMD as well as newer entrants such as Qualcomm and Nvidia. It also said it took a financial hit from an explosion this month at one of its facilities in Israel, in which two employees died.

Intel has, however, benefited from booming demand for central processing unit chips, or CPUs, used in AI data centre infrastructure. The company on Thursday said its data centre and AI revenue was $7.3 billion, up 78 per cent year on year.

It noted its new custom chip business, in which it plans to co-design AI chips with Big Tech customers, has dragged down margins as it gets off the ground.

The chipmaker on Thursday reported $4 billion in capital expenditure for the quarter. Intel said it was on track to spend more than $20 billion in 2026.

On a call with analysts, Tan said he was increasingly confident in its manufacturing technology as the “yield” – a measure of how many viable chips roll off its production lines – on its current generation “18A” technology continues to improve.

Intel reported net income of $3.3 billion, although that figure reflects volatility in the value of its shares held in escrow under its investment deal with the US government. Adjusted net income was $2.8 billion. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026