Intel shares soar 20% on earnings beat and stronger-than-expected outlook
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Intel posted first-quarter results that beat expectations, sparking a 20% rise in its share price in after-hours trading. The US government's stake in the company, acquired under the Trump administration, is up nearly 300%.
Investors drove Intel shares up 20% in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company published a quarterly report that signalled a successful pivot towards AI-driven hardware.
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According to the financial disclosure, Intel surpassed analyst predictions for both revenue and earnings.
Revenue came in at $13.58 billion (€11.6bn) against a $12.3 billion (€10.5bn) estimate, a 7.2% rise year-on-year, while adjusted earnings per share clocked $0.29 against a $0.01 estimate that many analysts had anticipated.
The firm also provided evidence that its strategy to integrate advanced AI capabilities across its product range is yielding results and strengthening the outlook.
The core of Intel's financial recovery was found in its Data Centre and AI (DCAI) division, which delivered results that far outpaced Wall Street estimates.
The DCAI segment generated $5.05 billion (€4.2bn) in revenue for the quarter, representing a 22.4% increase compared to the same period last year. This figure was notably higher than the $4.41 billion (€3.77bn) that analysts had projected.
The figures confirmed that its Xeon 6 processors and Gaudi 3 AI accelerators have gained significant traction among enterprise customers and cloud service providers.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who only started a year ago, stated that "the next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic."
"This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings."
Looking ahead, Intel has issued a robust forecast for the second quarter, projecting revenue between $13.8 billion (€11.8bn) and $14.8 billion (€12.6bn). This guidance sits well above the $13 billion (€11.1bn) that investors had expected.
RelatedRecovering from the US government intervention in 2025
These positive figures come as a relief to shareholders who witnessed Intel's most turbulent year in recent history. In 2025, the company faced a severe existential crisis, reporting multi-billion dollar losses and struggling with inefficient manufacturing nodes.
To prevent a collapse, which was argued could threaten national security, the Trump administration took a direct 9.9% equity stake in the business in August 2025.
The US government invested $8.9 billion (€7.8bn) at a $20.47 (€18.01) share price, however, $5.7 billion (€5bn) of the investment was funded with grants that had already been awarded to Intel but not yet paid.
As part of the broader deal, Intel scrapped high-profile factory projects in Germany and Poland to consolidate its operations and focus on US domestic production.
At the time of writing and following the 20% rise in after-hours trading, Intel shares sit at $81.3 (€71.5) representing a nearly 300% increase since the Trump administration took a stake.
During this period of distress, Intel also executed a massive downsizing strategy, cutting its global workforce by 25%, or roughly 25,000 employees.
The move was designed to stem the flow of capital and simplify a "needlessly fragmented" factory footprint, according to management.
The current earnings beat suggests that these drastic measures, while difficult at the time, have successfully stabilised the balance sheet and allowed the company to reinvest in the high-margin AI market where it had previously lagged behind competitors.
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