Intel soars 53% in 9 days, biggest rally on record
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- Intel shares soared 53% in nine sessions through Monday — the most on record for any similar stretch — with the stock posting its best week since January 2020
- Apollo Global Management sold half of Intel's Ireland plant back to the chipmaker for $14.2 billion in early April, prompting Great Hill Capital's Thomas Hayes to declare Intel is in "expansion mode, not survival mode"
- Intel joined Elon Musk's Terafab project to develop semiconductors for Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, while Alphabet's Google committed to future generations of Intel Xeon processors in data centers
- Intel is up 72% year-to-date on top of last year's 84% jump; the US government's stake is now worth roughly $27 billion, more than triple its original investment
- Wall Street is deeply skeptical: of 52 Bloomberg-tracked analysts, only 10 rate Intel a buy while six have sells — the weakest consensus (3.15 out of 5) among chipmakers
- Intel trades at more than 90 times estimated earnings, its highest on record and over 50% above the dot-com bubble peak, while the stock is still down about 8% from its 2020 high
Why it matters: This rally runs on a turnaround narrative, not earnings — Intel is projected to post a 17-cent per-share net loss this year and trades at 90x earnings, 50% above the dot-com peak. For the US government, its roughly $27 billion stake is now worth triple the original investment; for skeptics, the 6-sell, 10-buy analyst split is the warning.
