Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan speaks during the keynote address at Computex in Taipei on June 2, 2026.
Chen Yucheng | AFP | Getty Images
Intel shares plunged in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company issued a weak outlook for the fourth quarter, citing continued weakness in the global PC market.
Here’s how the company performed in the third quarter compared to the expectations of analysts surveyed by LSEG.
Earnings per share: 52 cents adjusted, 40 cents expected; Revenue: $16.51 billion, $16.5 billion expected.
The company said in a press release that sales increased 21% from $13.7 billion in the same period last year.
However, despite data center and AI revenue increasing 78% to $7.3 billion, Intel’s client computing and physical AI group’s revenue fell 5% year over year to $8.1 billion, lower than expected.
Global PC shipments fell 4% year over year in the second quarter due to rising costs for memory and other components, according to Counterpoint Research.
For the current quarter, Intel said it expects adjusted earnings per share to be 25 cents on revenue between $15 billion and $16 billion. Analysts had expected revenue of $17.1 billion and EPS of 43 cents, according to LSEG.
“While we expect the PC slowdown to continue through at least the first half of next year, we remain optimistic about the opportunities across our broad portfolio,” David Zinsner, Intel’s head of finance, said in a release. “We continue to make disciplined investments in capacity and working capital to increase supply and support future growth.”
Additionally, Intel’s forecast reflects the impact of an explosion at an Israeli factory earlier this month that killed two workers and seriously injured three others. Zinsner told Reuters that the accident will cost the company about $600 million in lost revenue in the second quarter, and that the company plans to start ramping up local production by the end of this week.
Intel’s stock price has soared, rising about 150% since the beginning of the year, but fell about 23% in October as concerns about the scale of the company’s artificial intelligence expansion emerged.
Intel, best known for its industry-leading central processing units (CPUs), has benefited from the rise of agent AI. Chatbots and large-scale models rely heavily on graphics processors; Nvidia and advanced micro deviceAgent applications such as Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots rely on CPUs to help coordinate tasks and data from computers running in the cloud.
CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a press release: “Despite the short-term headwinds impacting the entire PC industry, long-term demand for CPUs, and by extension all computing platforms, remains strong.”
Nvidia, which has become the world’s most valuable company thanks to its dominance in GPUs, is scheduled to report earnings in mid-November. AMD will report next week.
Meanwhile, Intel’s foundry business has struggled to gain foothold.
Intel is the only advanced logic chip maker based in the United States and is currently mass producing cutting-edge 18A chips at a new factory in Arizona, replacing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.
Intel remains the only major customer for the chip, but analysts say major fabless customers may choose Intel for its next chip, the 14A.
“People want a second source of information that can shake TSMC’s arm and keep pricing honest,” TechInsights analyst Dan Hutchison said. “All the big companies are testing there.”
In addition to the memory shortage, Intel’s Zinsner said in August that another key component of chip manufacturing, known as the substrate, is “very constrained.”
The Trump administration acquired a 10% stake in the company last year after the company fell behind in 7-nanometer and 10-nanometer technologies. Nvidia and SoftBank also invested billions in Intel last year.
Mr. Tan has taken a more measured approach to foundry spending than his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, who embarked on an ambitious revival of the company’s foundry business.
Intel announced last week that it had installed the first structural trusses at its giant chip factory in Ohio, which was originally scheduled to ship chips in 2025. The company’s next plant in Arizona is scheduled to begin operations by the end of 2028.
Oracle this week unveiled an expanded deal with Intel, announcing at its annual AI conference that it will deploy the chipmaker’s next-generation Xeon server processors and the latest rack-scale systems from Nvidia and AMD as it continues to add capacity to its data centers.
Intel completed a $23 billion stock offering in August. Tech giants have spent trillions of dollars in recent years to meet the insatiable demand for AI and the infrastructure needed to support it.
WATCH: Can Intel’s new Arizona chip manufacturing plant bounce back from the brink?
