Intel Corporation share price had a 11% increase in the trading session on Wednesday and it is currently valued at 54.92 per share, a high-value quotation since early 2022.
This rush was largely carried by the speculative trading excitement relating to the expected demand of artificial intelligence (AI) server chips given the coming of the earnings announcement of the company of quarter-end.
This increase in share price is the culmination of a spectacular 149% growth over the last 12 months that has seen Intel being moved out of a laggard into a competitor in the high-performance semiconductor industry.
Rally Drivers
The market rally drivers may be explained due to the bullish approach taken by investors, that is, with the perspective that in 2026, the central processing units (CPUs) of Intel servers will be sold out because of the massive adoption of AI by hyperscalers.
The shares have been predicted to rise by 10-15% by analysts at KeyBanc who just upgraded the company to a buy rating and praised the 18A producer yield of the company which was well above the industry average at 70-80%.
We expect outsized data center demand from hyperscalers this year to be a significant tailwind
for Intel’s data center business, the KeyBanc analysts wrote. They have a price target of $60 for the stock, which closed above $54 on Wednesday.
Earnings Spotlight
Regarding the expectations of earnings, analysts estimate reduction of the fourth-quarter revenue to $13.37 billion, and rise of the data center and AI sales, which supports the main growth driver at Intel.
Analysts predict that the ‘Net Revenues- Total Intel Products Group- Data Center and AI’ will reach $4.36 billion. The estimate suggests a change of +28.8% year over year.
The net losses in the current year are projected to be reduced to $0.12 per share as compared to the year before when the losses were recorded at 0.63 per share due to cost cutting measures.
Strategic Boosts
The United State government has its stakes with the added allocation of investment in strategies to become the most important shareholder of Intel in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.
President Donald Trump recently proclaimed that
The United States Government Is Proud to Be a Shareholder of Intel drawing fresh attention to one of the world’s most influential semiconductor companies.
With a primary investment of up to $5 billion, Nvidia has invested to align Intel CPUs with the Nvidia AI graphical processing units. At the same time, it has also been reported that Apple can implement the 18A process on low end Mac and iPad products starting in 2027.
Critical Outlook
Intel has the ability to recover its previous poor performance but this will only be determined by its ability to continue with foundry business in the face of an AI-transforming data-center market that is estimated to grow at an average of 14% in the next three years to 2030.
However, the coverage of decreases in income can also indicate far greater dangers; and doing better than AI standards would keep the market momentum and can possibly position Intel as the second-rated foundry in case the yields are not decreased. Failure will cause an investor to run away, whereas success will double the gains.
