Well, apparently, two rounds of investment are not enough to save some jobs in Arizona. At least, that was the story for chip stock Intel (INTC), who issued its third WARN notice in a year to Arizona. The move proved welcome to shareholders, but not by much. Intel stock gained fractionally in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
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Intel issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice just recently, which would mean another 97 workers lost throughout Arizona. This is on top of the 700 workers hit by notice last month, and the 385 from last October. This seems to be part of the larger movement from Intel, in which 15% of the company would be let go in a bid to cut costs.
But with Arizona host to around 12,000 Intel jobs, the losses have been comparatively minor. Adding up all the losses, current and projected, puts us under 10% total. At least, so far; there is still some space left to the year, after all, and Intel may have some more cuts to make before it is all said and done.
“It Sickens Me to the Core”
Meanwhile, more pushback emerged from various sources about the Intel deal the Trump administration launched. The Hill offered up commentary declaring the move “socialism,” and that “…government should stay out.” While calling a move to get some value from a free grant does not seem like socialism, there are some concerns to address.
Further, California governor Gavin Newsom took the opportunity to attempt an easy dunk on the Trump administration, declaring that the Intel stake “…sickens me to the core.” He further declared that people would be “outraged” had Joe Biden done the same thing during his administration. He was apparently either unaware or uncaring that it was the Biden administration that handed Intel the no-strings cash to begin with.
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 23.45% rally in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $22.17 per share implies 11.02% downside risk.
