The Intel logo is displayed on a sign in front of Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, on January 22, 2026.
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intel reported fourth-quarter results Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations, but gave a soft outlook for the current quarter.
The company’s shares fell as much as 13% in after-hours trading.
Here’s how the chipmaker performed compared to Wall Street expectations, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG.
Earnings per share: 15 cents adjusted, 8 cents expected; Revenue: $13.7 billion, $13.4 billion expected.
Intel said it expects first-quarter sales of $11.7 billion to $12.7 billion and adjusted breakeven earnings per share. This was below LSEG’s forecast of earnings of 5 cents a share on revenue of $12.51 billion.
Finance chief David Zinsner told CNBC’s Cristina Persineveros that the company’s soft guidance in the first quarter was due in part to the company not having the supply it needs to meet seasonal demand, and that supply should improve in the second quarter of this year.
Chief Executive Officer Lipbu Tan said on a call with analysts that the company aims to improve production efficiency, known as yield, to improve the supply of its products.
“Our yield is in line with our internal plans,” Mr Tan said. “They are still below the standard I would like.”
The company announced a net loss of $600 million, or 12 cents per diluted share. In the same period last year, Intel reported a net loss of $100 million, or 3 cents per share.
Investor expectations were high for Intel heading into this report, with the stock up 147% over the past year. The rally is driven by optimism that Intel is on its way to winning its first major customer in the foundry business that makes chips for other companies.
Tan said earlier this month that the company’s 18A manufacturing technology, which competes with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s 2nm technology, will be in “oversupply” in 2025. This suggests the technology is mature enough to begin mass production of products such as Intel’s own Core Ultra Series 3 central processors.
Tan said in a statement that Intel is “actively working” to increase 18A supply to meet “strong customer demand.”
Zinsner told CNBC that customers for Intel’s next-generation 14A technology will appear in the second half of this year. Zinsner added that the company is generally unlikely to announce customers.
“Once we have those, we need to start really putting capital into the 14A space and we’ll see,” Zinsner said.
Intel said the foundry has $4.5 billion in revenue, some of which goes toward making its own chips.
Analysts are also optimistic about strong sales of Intel’s latest server chips, driven by increased spending on infrastructure for artificial intelligence. Tan said in a statement Thursday that Intel’s central processing units are becoming increasingly important because of systems built for artificial intelligence.
Revenue from these chips, reported as data center and AI sales, totaled $4.7 billion in the quarter, up 9% on an annual basis.
Laptop chips are reported as revenue in the Client Computing Group. Sales in this product category were $8.2 billion, down 7% year over year.
By 2025, the U.S. government, Softbank, Nvidia They invested heavily in chip manufacturers and all became major shareholders. Intel announced that the sale of $5 billion worth of stock to NVIDIA was completed during the quarter.
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