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The Exiled · 28.01.2025., 19:20

Citiraj:

Intel's takeover dilemma: A Gordian knot of funding and politics + Intel cuts Xeon 6 prices up to 30% to battle AMD in the Data Center

Citiraj:

No one wants to buy Intel's fabs and their bottomless funding needs, but the company probably cannot be sold without someone taking them on. There's been more stories this past couple of weeks about Intel getting acquired. An industry analyst claimed that he "had been read a letter" which showed some unnamed company was in the process of buying the company. We are not going to link to that report because we are not certain about its accuracy... something in the language feels "off" to us. Nonetheless, it sparked a surge in the company's share price and a host of follow-up coverage. This is not exactly news – Reuters reported this back in September, and to be blunt, we trust Reuters' sourcing a lot more. Going back even further, we speculated that Broadcom could buy Intel all the way back in May before things got really bad at Intel. We were only semi-serious about that idea, but this timeline has clearly entered reality-is-stranger-than-fiction territory, and it looks likely that Broadcom at least considered a bid. As we have been saying, Intel is in play, and anything is possible.

Well, not anything. There are only a handful of companies capable of buying Intel, and the two most likely candidates have already taken a look and seem to have stepped away. There are also a dozen or so private equity funds who could afford it, but our sense is that they are passing on it as well. A takeover of Intel has become a Gordian knot. The big problem is funding the company's fabs, which will require tens of billions of dollars and years to get back on track. Few companies, and no private equity funds, really want to deal with that large of a funding need and time horizon. On the other hand, the US government has given Intel a lot of money, and so simply shutting down the fabs is deeply problematic. No one wants the fabs, but the company cannot be sold without them.

In theory, the new administration could give a buyer approval to shut the fabs, but if someone has enough political capital for that purpose, why not use that political capital to secure some direct government support? In speaking with investors, our impression is that the Street assumes the only way to save Intel is for the government to intervene. We maintain that this is not a hard requirement, but we recognize that this is now the common perception of the situation. There are, of course, rumors that a certain highly-connected, deeply troubling tech mogul has a plan to buy the company. And from the very narrow perspective of saving the US' semiconductor manufacturing capacity, that may be what it takes.

We are increasingly convinced that the only way for Intel to survive is for someone to buy them and remove the board.
Unfortunately for the company, and the semiconductor industry, that path looks very challenging.

Izvor: TechSpot i TechPowerUp

EDIT:

Citiraj:

Intel foundries lost $13 billion last year, but its losses are no longer historic

Citiraj:

Last quarter, amid turmoil and restructuring, chipmaker Intel announced one of the largest corporate quarterly losses of all time — $16.6 billion, ten times worse than its $1.6B loss the quarter before. But in today’s Q4 2024 and full-year earnings release, Intel’s not hurting as badly: the company just announced a mere $126 million quarterly loss on $14.3 billion in revenue. That doesn’t mean the company’s in great shape, exactly, as its primary businesses were all down this quarter and barely up over the full year. And if you thought its chipmaking foundries were spending too much back when they lost $7 billion in 2023, well, Intel just revealed the foundries lost nearly double that — $13.4 billion — across 2024.

Some people would argue that foundry money is just the price Intel’s paying to invest in its future, catch up to rivals, and stay the only major chipmaker that designs and fabricates its chips from scratch. And by “some people,” I mean it was ousted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s goal. But now he’s gone, there have been more whispers about Intel spinning off its chipmaking businesses, something Gelsinger somewhat seeded himself. Intel says its foundry business is doing better anyhow, though, with reduced losses of $2.3 billion last quarter, expected “financial improvements” coming next year as it ramps production of its extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chips, and a plan to hit “op inc break-even” by the end of 2027. Intel says its all-important 18A process, which uses EUV, will produce chips in volume in the second half of next year. Intel was also the largest recipient of the CHIPS Act, though that amounted to single-digit billions worth of government funding.

Meanwhile, the company seems to be laying off just as many employees as promised: by the end of 2024, it had 15,000 fewer employees than it did the previous quarter, the company confirmed today. Over the full year, Intel lost $18.76 billion on $53.1 billion in revenue. Intel is canceling its next big AI chip, codename Falcon Shores, and keeping it “as an internal test chip only without bringing it to market.” The company will focus on Jaguar Shores, a “system-level solution at rack scale,” instead. Intel says it has nothing new to share about the search for a permanent CEO, save that the search is progressing.

Izvor: The Verge