Intel shares tumble as supply chain snarls hamper turnaround

By Kanchana Chakravarty

Jan 23 (Reuters) - Intel's shares plunged 12% earlier the doorbell connected Friday aft the institution struggled to conscionable beardown artificial intelligence-driven request for data-center chips owed to ​supply constraints, disappointing investors betting connected its turnaround.

After years of sitting retired the AI roar ‌that turned Nvidia into the world's astir invaluable company, Intel is yet enjoying a request surge for its accepted server chips ‌that are utilized alongside precocious graphics processors successful information centers.

That and high-profile investments from the U.S. government, SoftBank <9984.T> and Nvidia person reignited capitalist interest. Intel's banal outpaced astir semiconductor firms past twelvemonth with an 84% summation and has extended its rally into 2026, up 47% successful January truthful far.

"The rally had been mostly ⁠driven by 'the dream' alternatively than the ‌near-term world oregon fundamentals," TD Cowen analysts said.

Intel cannot support up with request adjacent arsenic it runs factories astatine capacity, but Intel CFO David Zinsner said helium ‍expects disposable proviso to amended successful the 2nd 4th aft hitting its lowest levels successful the archetypal quarter.

Jefferies analysts besides noted that Intel's proviso shortage volition apt bottommost retired successful March, portion brokerage Oppenheimer said the constraints volition ​ebb by the 2nd quarter.

Friday's losses followed quarterly nett and gross forecasts that were beneath estimates. ‌The driblet volition erase astir $31 cardinal from Intel's marketplace value, if the premarket moves hold.

"The server rhythm seems real, but the institution appears to person woefully misjudged it with its capableness footprint caught massively disconnected guard," said analysts astatine Bernstein.

The institution faces a lag successful changing the benignant of semiconductors it makes, hampering efforts to summation accumulation of in-demand information halfway processors.

Also weighing connected Intel's forecast was the planetary ⁠memory proviso shortage wherever terms hikes are expected to dampen ​end-market request successful the idiosyncratic machine marketplace - Intel's biggest segment, ​where its caller "Panther Lake" PC chips were expected to spark a comeback aft years of market-share losses to AMD .

Investors are intimately examining Intel's turnaround nether CEO Lip-Bu Tan, ‍who has focused connected cutting ⁠costs and scaling backmost expansive declaration manufacturing ambitions.

The imaginable of caller outer lawsuit announcements had greatly contributed to Intel's rally up of results, but Tan's comments connected a post-earnings telephone indicated ⁠that 2 customers had lone gone truthful acold arsenic to measure the method details of its upcoming 14A manufacturing technology.

(Reporting ‌by Kanchana Chakravarty successful Bengaluru;Additional reporting by Samuel Indyk successful London and Arsheeya Bajwa ‌in Bengaluru; editing by Alun John and Maju Samuel)