Intel (INTC) has quickly moved from a turnaround story to a high-stakes earnings setup, and the stock appears to have run ahead of the fundamentals in the near term. Optimism around 18A, the foundry strategy, and recent product momentum has clearly improved sentiment, but the upcoming Q1 results will need to show that the business is catching up to the stock’s move. At this point, the question is no longer whether the technology company is back in the game, but whether the stock has moved too fast heading into Q1 and how much of the recovery is already priced in.
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The Foundry Flip and the 18A Breakthrough
Sentiment around Intel has been growing increasingly bullish, and last week’s launch of its Core Series 3 chips, codenamed Wildcat Lake, further sustained this trend. Intel gave the market something much more meaningful than the usual incremental upgrade story. This was the first real sign that its 18A process is making its way into mainstream consumer products. Notably, the news is also likely to change how investors read the broader turnaround.
For a while, Intel’s manufacturing roadmap felt like something investors wanted to believe more than something they could fully trust. Now it’s starting to look a lot more tangible. Bringing that level of process technology to high-volume chips suggests the company may finally be delivering on a plan that, in the past, would have looked overly ambitious. The story around PowerVia is especially interesting, as Intel is changing how power gets delivered through the chip by moving it to the back side of the wafer.
The simplest way to think about it is that it frees up the main surface for the stuff that actually does the computing, while also improving efficiency and heat management. That’s why Wall Street is now back to paying attention. For once, Intel is not just talking about catching up. It may actually have a real design advantage in an area that matters. While Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) (TSM) is expected to roll out something similar in the future, Intel has a window where it can credibly say it’s ahead on an important part of the architecture.
High Expectations on Q1 Earnings Report
Now, all eyes are on the Q1 earnings report due after the close on April 23, and with the stock having run up so hard, expectations are clearly much higher. At this point, a decent quarter on its own probably isn’t enough. What investors really need to see is evidence that the foundry story is starting to show up in the numbers. Regardless of whether Intel beats estimates or raises its guidance, the bigger question I want answered is whether Intel Foundry is beginning to make progress on losses after all the heavy spending.
The company has poured an enormous amount into capex, and now the market wants proof that external customer deals, including the ones with Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), are starting to translate into actual financial results. If management can provide investors with a credible path to better margins, I think the rally may have legs.
Intel already went through the ugliest part of the turnaround last year, when the cuts were painful, the losses were hard to ignore, and confidence was at its lowest. That phase is now mostly behind it. What the market wants to know next is whether the manufacturing progress is real and repeatable, especially around 18A yields.
Valuation and the Mission-Critical Premium
Trying to value Intel through a P/E ratio today is rather meaningless. Its bottom line has been impacted by a number of extraordinary and one-off items. In the meantime, its future growth estimates are speculative because we’re essentially betting on Intel’s ability to win back the data center and dominate the artificial intelligence (AI) PC era simultaneously.
A better metric might be the price-to-sales ratio. Even after the rally, Intel is trading at around 6.3x its expected 2026 revenue, which stands near $53 billion. In this market, that does not strike me as especially stretched, particularly when you compare it with the multiples investors have been willing to pay elsewhere in the semis.
Intel is also not some asset-light story selling a distant dream. It owns the manufacturing base, is strategically important, and sits in a part of the supply chain that governments increasingly view as critical to national security. That does not remove execution risk, but it does give the stock a different kind of support than most companies get.
So even if margins only recover gradually, there is still a reasonable case for the valuation. The broader demand backdrop for advanced chips is not going away, and Intel has a real chance to matter more in that environment than the market previously assumed. That is why I believe the recent rally does not feel to me like a flashy momentum trade so much as a bet on infrastructure that is becoming more important by the year.
Is Intel Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Despite its prolonged rally, Intel remains a polarizing stock. It now features a Hold consensus rating on Wall Street, based on seven Buy, 23 Hold, and four Sell ratings. Regardless, Intel’s average price target of $56.41 implies about 14.86% downside over the next 12 months, so Intel will have a lot to prove in its upcoming Q1 report.
Final Thoughts
Intel has spent the past couple of years trying to earn back credibility the hard way. The rollout of 18A suggests the technology side is finally starting to speak for itself again, and the stock still does not look fully priced for a company that may be getting its footing back. I don’t think this is a risk-free call. Still, the setup looks more compelling than it did for most of the turnaround. The bullish case is based on actual progress today, though the current share price demands a premium for that increased certainty.