Intel (INTC) Plunges 28.6% on Q4 Guidance Far Below Estimates

Intel’s Worst Session Since the 1970s

Intel shares collapsed 28.6% on Friday, closing at $65.76 in what market data ranks as the chipmaker’s worst single-day performance since the 1970s. Roughly 450 million shares changed hands, and the plunge stripped about $12 billion from the value of the United States government’s roughly 10% equity stake in a single session, a loss proportionally felt across the company’s market cap.

The trigger was guidance, not the third-quarter report itself. Intel beat expectations for the quarter ended in September, but its outlook for the current quarter came in far short of the Street: revenue of $15.0 billion to $16.0 billion against the $17.1 billion analysts surveyed by LSEG had modeled, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.25 versus a $0.43 consensus. The projected profit sits at barely 60% of the estimate.

Chief financial officer David Zinsner told analysts that client computing revenue, the PC segment, is expected to fall more than 20% quarter over quarter in the fourth quarter as OEM partners work down inventory. Chief executive Lip-Bu Tan said the PC correction accelerated over the past two months and will not ease until memory supply and pricing normalize. Zinsner projects total PC demand shrinks about 10% in 2027 and wrote in the earnings release that the slowdown runs at least through the first half of next year.

The Israel accident is inside the numbers too. A gas cylinder explosion at the Fab 28 plant in Kiryat Gat on October 14 killed two workers, and the site has been shut for roughly two weeks. Zinsner put the fourth-quarter revenue hit at about $300 million, with a similar amount expected in the first quarter of 2027, nearly all of it 10-nanometer server products. One segment held up: data center and AI revenue reached $7.3 billion in the third quarter, up 78% year over year, with Zinsner saying demand continues to run clearly ahead of available supply. Fourth-quarter non-GAAP gross margin is guided to 38.0%, down 6.1 percentage points from 44.1%.

Wall Street Cuts Targets to $75

The selloff did not stay contained. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index finished 7.20% lower, compounding an 8.7% decline it had already logged for October through the prior session. Advanced Micro Devices lost 10.88% and NVIDIA 4.22%, while Broadcom and Micron each dropped more than 5%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.86% and the S&P 500 1.82%. Asian chip names followed: SK Hynix slid more than 7% and Samsung Electronics more than 3%. The rout also reached crypto, a market often noted for its correlation with high-tech equities, as Bitcoin fell more than 4% to levels last seen in mid-September.

Sell-side desks moved within hours. Bank of America’s Vivek Arya cut his rating from buy to neutral and dropped his target from $145 to $100, projecting fourth-quarter PC shipments fall 25% to 30% and arguing the company has not yet shown sufficient progress on external foundry customers. Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon kept his market-perform rating but cut his target from $110 to $75, saying investors had overlooked a deteriorating PC outlook and that capacity is misallocated: too much for PCs, too little for servers. UBS’s Timothy Arcuri went from $100 to $80 and called the guidance well below even the most bearish investor expectations. Barclays’ Tom O’Malley lowered his target from $100 to $75, citing continued share loss in core markets, while Wells Fargo’s Joe Quatrochi moved from $120 to $80 on limited visibility into external foundry commitments. D.A. Davidson downgraded to neutral with a report titled “Not fixed yet.”

Context makes the fall steeper. The stock had rallied roughly 150% into the report, a gain that narrowed to 78% after Friday’s session, and it remains more than half below its June 22 closing high of $140.94. Even the lowest new target, $75, sits about 14% above the $65.76 close. Lip-Bu Tan told analysts he is “very excited” about progress on the 14A process with several prospective customers, with announcements expected over the next two quarters.

Support at $63.26 Under Test

COINOTAG data shows INTC changing hands at $65.06, down another 8.70% over the past 24 hours after trading a range of $63.30 to $71.86. The composite scoring puts the strongest support at $63.26, rated 82 out of 100, and the strongest resistance at $70.49, rated 89 out of 100. Trading has already pressed into that support: the 24-hour low of $63.30 sits four cents above it. The daily relative strength index reads 23.7 and the MACD signal is bearish, both consistent with the downtrend the score map shows. A close back above $70.49 would be the first sign of stabilization; losing $63.26 leaves a long gap toward the next scored level at $47.87.