Buy, Hold or Sell Intel at Over $100?

Quick Read

• Intel (INTC) more than tripled this year to $108 on six straight revenue beats and a working 18A node, but Q1 2026 showed a $3.73B GAAP net loss, negative free cash flow of $3.87B, and Intel Foundry losing roughly $2.5B per quarter. AMD (AMD) gained 26% in Client Computing and 57% in Data Center, indicating significant share loss. The stock trades at a 101x forward P/E against a consensus price target of $84, implying 22% downside.

• Intel’s turnaround story is real but already reflected in its valuation, with sentiment rolling over from 72.69 to 40.35 in 30 days as retail investors take profits and the company guides Q2 EPS down to $0.20 despite strategic validation from partnerships with NVIDIA, Google, and inclusion in the Terafab project.

• The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks. Get them here FREE.

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has more than tripled this year on a turnaround story that is real, and that is precisely the problem for anyone trying to put fresh money to work today.

Intel makes the x86 CPUs that run most of the world's PCs and servers, and under CEO Lip-Bu Tan it has become a contract chip manufacturer with U.S. government backing, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) and SoftBank as shareholders, and a foundry competing for hyperscaler business.

The run from the $20s last July to triple digits reflects six straight revenue beats, a working 18A node, and strategic partnerships. It also reflects investors who decided very quickly that the worst was over.

The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks. Get them here FREE.

What the bulls are buying at $108

The fundamental story has turned. Q1 2026 revenue grew 7.2% year over year to $13.58 billion, Data Center and AI climbed 22%, Intel Foundry grew 16%, and non-GAAP gross margin expanded 180 basis points to 41%.

Tan framed the setup bluntly, arguing that the move "from foundational models to inference to agentic" is "significantly increasing the need for Intel's CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings."

Strategic validation stacks up. Intel Xeon 6 was picked as host CPU for NVIDIA's DGX Rubin NVL8 systems, Google signed a multiyear deal co-developing custom ASIC IPUs, and Intel joined the Terafab project alongside SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla. Cash sits at $17.25 billion, up 92.77% year over year, with $5 billion from NVIDIA and $2 billion from SoftBank on the balance sheet. Demand outpaces supply.

Why the price already reflects all of that

Q1 2026 produced a GAAP net loss of $3.73 billion on a $4.07 billion Mobileye goodwill impairment, free cash flow was negative $3.87 billion, and Intel Foundry is still losing roughly $2.5 billion a quarter. Trailing EPS is negative $0.60. Forward P/E is 101x.