Intel has suddenly turned into the market’s main character — at least for now. In just nine sessions, the chipmaker’s shares jumped 53% and pushed its market value up by more than $100 billion, ending the stretch with its best week since January 2020.
The reason is simple, but not exactly gentle: a run of “good news” landed all at once, and investors acted like they’d been waiting for proof that Intel can finally pull off the turnaround it’s promised after years of underperforming. The drama has been building for weeks. You can almost feel it in the trading rhythm — like, Monday’s 3.1% gain didn’t show up in a vacuum; it came after the momentum had already been cooking.
One early April announcement lit the fuse. Intel agreed to pay $14.2 billion to buy back half of a plant in Ireland from Apollo Global Management. Misryoum newsroom reported the move as a signal that Intel is making progress in its turnaround, not just talking about it. And the stock’s reaction fit that storyline. As Thomas Hayes, chairman and managing member of Great Hill Capital, put it: “It is clearly no longer on life support.” He also said, “It sees itself in expansion mode, not survival mode,” which is… a pretty big shift in tone for a company that investors have been doubting.
Then came the partnerships, which are doing their own kind of marketing— even if the details are technical. Misryoum editorial desk noted that Intel said it would join Elon Musk’s Terafab project to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc., SpaceX and xAI. After that, Alphabet Inc.’s Google committed to using future generations of Intel’s Xeon processors in data centers. Put together, it sounds like Intel is trying to lock in demand before the market changes its mind again.
By the end of this rally, the gains are hard to ignore: the stock’s up 72% for the year, and that follows last year’s 84% jump, powered in part by investments from Nvidia Corp., SoftBank Group Corp. and even the US government. Misryoum analysis indicates the government’s stake is now worth roughly $27 billion — more than three times its original investment, and slightly less than what the US pays annually for childcare services. That last comparison is the kind of detail that makes the numbers feel real, even if it also makes you blink.
Still, the market is not exactly agreeing on the ending. Wall Street remains skeptical that the worst is over. Of the 52 analysts tracked by Misryoum who follow the shares, just 10 have buy ratings and six have sells — more than double the average for an S&P 500 stock. The recommendation consensus sits at 3.15 out of five, the weakest among chipmakers, and the stock trades at a sizable premium to the average analyst price target, suggesting it may have run too far, too fast.
And valuation… yeah, that part gets spicy. The stock is trading at more than 90 times estimated earnings for the next 12 months, the highest on record, according to data that goes back to the early 1980s. That’s over 50% above the peak dot-com bubble level and compares with an average multiple of about 21 for an index of chip stocks. Some analysts think investors should zoom out anyway: while Intel is expected to post
a net loss of about 17 cents per share this year, its net income is projected to be 33 cents per share in 2027, and $2.13 per share by 2029, according to data compiled by Misryoum. Seaport Group’s Jay Goldberg — one of the many analysts to upgrade the stock in 2026 — said Wall Street is “probably underestimating” Intel’s long-term earnings prospects. But even he acknowledged how wild the current landscape is: valuations are
“completely insane” across the chip sector, and Intel has “a better shot of surprising earnings on the upside.”
Whether this rally is just momentum or the start of something sturdier, the market is about to find out— especially with earnings due Monday. Actually… maybe the better question is whether Intel can keep the story moving without tripping over the math.
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