Sometimes, even when businesses win, investors just will not reflect as much. Chip stock Intel (INTC) demonstrated as much, as its advanced packaging options are winning attention throughout the tech sector. Despite this, however, Intel investors found sticking around hard to do. Share prices dropped nearly 3% in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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As it turns out, the market is beginning to regard Intel’s advanced packaging capabilities as a match for, or even a viable alternative to, those offered by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSM). The notion of advanced packaging basically allows users to bring together multiple chips into a single package, which allows for more powerful systems overall by stacking their capabilities.
Taiwan Semiconductor has run this market for years, but with Intel increasingly proving its own options on this front perfectly viable, and potentially able to pull market share out from under its major competitor. In fact, several companies—including Qualcomm (QCOM) and Apple (AAPL)—are hiring new engineers that can handle Intel’s advanced packaging techniques.
More Firings
While that is good news, Intel also brought out more job cuts. Another 669 workers were shown the door in Oregon, which is in addition to the 2,400 jobs lost back in July. It seems to be part of new CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s earlier-announced initiative to cut 15,000 jobs worldwide. However, Intel did not go on to state whether there would be similar cuts anywhere else in the world.
Reports suggest that the impact of the latest cuts will hit manufacturing sites most heavily, and nearly half of the workers dismissed, over 300, would be factory technicians. Reports also note that, with these cuts, Intel’s presence would drop to 16,000. That would be the smallest number of Intel employees in Oregon since 2012.
Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on three Buys, 24 Holds and six Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 43% rally in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $35.44 per share implies 2.81% upside potential.
