Intel (INTC) is set to post fourth quarter results on Thursday after markets close.
Wall Street expects the chipmaker to post EPS of $0.08 on revenue of $13.39 billion, implying a fall of 6% during the quarter.
Santa Clara, California-based Intel has been losing PC market share to rival AMD for quite some time. However, under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the company is undergoing a turnaround strategy, which includes drastic cost-cutting measures and a slew of high-profile investments from Nvidia and Softbank last year.
A roughly 10% ownership from the Trump Administration last year, accompanied by a staggering $11.1B investment by the U.S. government also boosted the company’s balance sheet.
Investors and analysts are now more optimistic that the AI boost along with the turnaround strategy will yield result.
“We had been cautious on Intel mainly given overall uncertainty on customer pipeline and execution headwinds in their foundry business while the core business was also lacking visibility on growth drivers,” HSBC analyst Frank Lee said.
However, the brokerage added that it now expects there is an overwhelmingly increasing demand for server CPUs driven by rising agentic AI and sees FY26e server shipments to grow 15%-20% y-o-y.
“Despite supply that remains tight, we still see an upside bias for FQ4 results on PC [and] server demand strength and see Street numbers (which are about in-line w/normal seasonal) as okay for FQ1 (March) guidance — especially off the stronger Dec Q base,” UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri said.
While tightening global memory supply could also pose as an additional challenge to Intel’s turnaround, analysts said that “2026 guidance points to renewed growth, margin expansion, and business stabilization.”
Over the last two years, Intel has beaten EPS estimates 63% of the time and has beaten revenue estimates 75% of the time.
Over the last three months, EPS estimates have seen 16 upward revisions, compared to 11 downward revisions, while revenue estimates have seen 15 upward revisions versus 16 downward moves.
Seeking Alpha, Seeking Alpha’s Quant rating and Wall Street analysts are all cautious and rated the stock a Hold.
The company has risen over 80% last year, outperforming the nearly 17% rise in the broader S&P 500 index.