Yesterday, new specs emerged around the Arrow Lake Refresh line of chips from chip stock Intel (INTC), and the stock did not respond well. Meanwhile, today, we also heard about performance benchmarks on the Arc Pro B-series line of graphics cards, and the market did not respond well to those either. In fact, Intel shares were down modestly in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
Elevate Your Investing Strategy:
- Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence.
The Arc Pro B50 got a set of Linux performance benchmarks, and open-source driver support metrics as well. As it turns out, the news was not especially bad; Phoronix testing indicated that the Arc Pro B50 came in as a fairly close match for an Nvidia (NVDA) RTX A2000. The Arc Pro had a 59 Watt average power consumption and a 71 Watt peak. The RTX A2000, meanwhile, had a 54 Watt average and a 70.5 Watt peak. Further, testing found that the Arc Pro B50 could handle solid workloads and offer a decent value besides.
All told, the Arc Pro B50 served as a good “…low-profile, entry-level workstation graphics card backed by fully open-source Linux graphics driver support.” And with a price tag of $349, there may be a market waiting for it when it rolls out.
“Better to Take the Government’s Money”
That was when popular, controversial, and perhaps even notorious stock analyst Jim Cramer came out with some new remarks about Intel. And Cramer was surprisingly generous….with taxpayer money. Cramer noted “…they needed to do a fundraiser. And it’s sometimes better to take the government’s money because that therefore helps you try to raise other…remember that’s only a drop in the bucket of what Intel needs.”
This makes a certain amount of sense, and investors have responded accordingly, with a 26% jump in August alone.
Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on one Buy, 25 Holds and three Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 24.6% rally in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $22.34 per share implies 7.2% downside risk.
