Intel ligt achter op de concurrenten en persoonlijk verwacht ik dat ze komende jaren een sprintje gaan doen richting 'de AI groten'.
NB: investeren in nieuwe plants en nieuwe apparaturen.
Met deze vooruitblik van Barron's..
www.barrons.com/articles/intel-stock-...
Intel Rallied 91% This Year. Expect Higher Highs in 2024.
Eric J. Savitz
The microprocessor pioneer is in the middle of a major business model transformation, attempting to build out the first major U.S.-based contract chip manufacturer, with more than a little help from Uncle Sam. Meanwhile, the global personal computer business has suffered through eight straight quarters of declining unit sales—and Intel has continued to face aggressive competition in both PCs and servers from Advanced Micro Devices.
All the while, Intel has been playing catch up with Nvidia and AMD in the market for graphics processors used for AI workloads. Through the first three quarters of the year, Intel’s revenue was down 21%. The company suffered an operating loss of $2.5 billion.
And for all of that, the stock rallied 91%. While that lagged behind Nvidia’s 240% surge and AMD’s 132% move, it was the biggest annual increase in Intel’s share price in 20 years.
There are reasons to think the Intel rally isn’t done. Gus Richard, the chip analyst at Northland Securities, argues that the stock remains significantly undervalued. He recently set a price target of $68, more than 30% above the current level, making him Wall Street’s biggest Intel bull.
Richard likes Intel for two reasons. He contends Intel’s outlook is improving on multiple fronts and that investors should be thinking about the chip maker from a sum-of-the-parts point of view, given that he sees Intel as a company that is in the process of breaking itself up.
Let’s begin with the fundamentals.
Intel has struggled in recent years with what was long considered its primary strength: manufacturing prowess. But Richard thinks Intel will recapture the lead in process technology from Taiwan Semiconductor and others in 2025, if not before.
He also sees Intel’s new focus on efficiency driving non-GAAP gross margin to nearly 53% in 2025, from 43% in 2023. “Over the last 20 years…the company with access to the best process technology has gained market share,” Richard wrote in a recent note. Intel’s disclosure that it has already won three customers for the cutting-edge 18-angstrom chip factory line it is building in Arizona is evidence it is retaking the lead in manufacturing.
Richard predicted revenue growth recovering to 8% next year, and 16% in 2025. He expects non-GAAP profits of 94 cents a share in 2023, $2 a share next year, and $3.30 a share in 2025.
The analyst cautioned that PC demand will remain soft in the first half of 2024, but said he sees a recovery after that, predicting strengthening in 2025 as the wave of PCs bought during the pandemic start to age out. He is also a believer in the AI PC story, in areas like content creation and productivity applications, saying he expects ways to use the technology will emerge in 2024 and drive up PC sales in 2025.
Richard also observed that Intel is splitting itself into five companies right in plain sight. The process started in 2022, with the initial public offering for Mobileye, the autonomous driving technology company, in which Intel continues to hold an 88% stake worth about $30 billion.
A few months ago, Intel indicated it was also planning an IPO for Altera, the field programmable gate array company it originally acquired in 2015. Intel also recently sold a combined 30% stake in IMS Nanofabrication, which makes masking tools used in extreme ultraviolet lithography, to Taiwan Semi and Bain Capital.
Richard also thinks Intel also will eventually split up its products and foundry businesses. On a stand-alone business, he estimated, Intel’s foundry arm would be the world’s second-largest player, behind only TSMC. He estimated its value at $100 billion.
The typical problem with sum-of-the-parts analyses is that they rarely reflect future events. But in Intel’s case, the story is already unfolding.
In June, Intel said it was going to treat the products and foundry segments as separate businesses. While the company recently said it has no current plans to break the two businesses apart, Richard thinks the split is inevitable, and that shareholders should reap the benefits when it happens.
