For the past few quarters, after each significant stock price dump, Intel investors ask the familiar question: is this the bottom? Yet, each time, the answer has been in the negative.
Now, given Intel's dire situation, which has seen its market capitalization collapse below the psychologically relevant $100 billion level, investors are once again pegging their hopes on a critically important board meeting in September to halt the company's seemingly perennial decline and jump-start the arduous process of a sustainable recovery.
We received our first inkling as to a major revival plan that is purportedly in the works this Friday when Bloomberg reported that Intel was working with a number of financial advisers, including the Wall Street behemoth Morgan Stanley, to come up with strategic options for its upcoming board meeting.
As per other reports, these advisers are also aiding Intel in fending off a high-profile attack from activist investors, who understandably remain extremely disgruntled with the current upheaval within the company.
This brings us to the crux of the matter. As per the latest reporting by Reuters, Intel plans to pitch the sale of its FPGA unit Altera at the upcoming board meeting as its intrinsic profits are no longer sufficient to sustain Altera's operations. Another option that remains on the table relates to a construction freeze on Intel's $30 billion German facility, which aligns with the chipmaker's already-disclosed plans to cut its capital spending by 17 percent in 2025 to just $21.5 billion.
Interestingly, Reuters is currently reporting that Intel will not pitch a sale of its chip manufacturing business at the upcoming board meeting. This, again, is understandable, especially as Intel has already received billions of dollars worth of federal funding to establish a sizable manufacturing footprint in the US, which complicates a potential divestment strategy.
Bear in mind that Intel is currently focusing on its Foundry unit to drive margin growth. The company expects the unit's ongoing expansion to result in cost savings of "more than $8 billion to $10 billion exiting 2025," which should allow for a non-GAAP gross margin of around 60 percent and non-GAAP operating margins of around 40 percent by 2030.
Nonetheless, given the state of affairs at Intel, the chipmaker might not have any option in the end other than to pursue a divestment of its chip manufacturing unit.
Meanwhile, as we reported in a post earlier this week, Lip-Bu Tan, a high-profile board member of Intel, has now resigned, citing the board's unwillingness to listen to his ideas to make Intel's contract manufacturing business more customer-centric and to remove the inertia-inducing layers of bureaucracy, including an army of middle managers who thwart innovation at the company's desktop and server divisions.
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