Intel Has Its Worst Day Since 1974; Chips Follow

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 30 — Intel’sIntel’s shares fell 28.58 percent on Friday, to $65.76, “its worst day since 1974 and second-worst day on record,” CNN reported, the day after the company forecast a weaker fourth quarter and blamed costly memory for a shrinking PC market. Some 455.6 million shares changed hands, against 134.2 million on Thursday.

Other chip makers fell with it: the PHLX Semiconductor index lost 7.20 percent, and AMD, Qualcomm and Arm, which all report their own quarters next week, fell 10.88, 11.12 and 9.97 percent.AMDNasdaq504.80▼61.62−10.9%Advanced Micro Devices · Friday’s session The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.86 percent and the S&P 500 1.82 percent, “each suffering their worst day since June,” CNN reported.

The fall undoes part of a long climb. Heading into Thursday’s report, Intel’s shares were up about 150 percent this year, CNBC reported; even after Friday they are up 78 percent, by CNN’s count. October alone took 45.30 percent off them, from $120.23 at the end of September.

Part of the bill lands on Washington: the government’s 10 percent stake, taken in August 2025, lost about $12 billion of its value on Friday, CNBC reported, though it said the stake is still a profitable investment.The Government’s SharesSome of the government’s shares, 132 million on Sept. 26, are still held in escrow, to be released to the Commerce Department as Intel performs under a CHIPS Act agreement. Intel carries them as a derivative liability, valued at $13.7 billion that day. When its stock falls, the liability shrinks and Intel books a gain: $1.0 billion in the third quarter. Nvidia’s stake in Intel lost about $6 billion, CNBC reported. Friday’s close is also 30.8 percent below the $95.00 a share at which Intel sold about 242 million new shares to the public in August, raising $22.6 billion after costs, according to its quarterly report.

The Filing

That report, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at 6:50 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, said the mid-October accident at Intel’s plant in Kiryat Gat, Israel, “resulted in employee casualties and injuries and halted manufacturing operations at the facility.” The explosion killed two workers and seriously injured a third, CNBC reported.Kiryat GatOne of Intel’s manufacturing plants, in Israel. Lip-Bu Tan, the chief executive, said the explosion had caused an “extended shutdown,” affecting shipments of 10-nanometer chips, CNBC reported. Operations “are expected to resume by the end of October 2026,” the filing said.

Intel wrote that reduced output and inefficiency would “adversely affect manufacturing costs, gross profit and operating results in Q4 2026 and through the first half of 2027,” three quarters in all, and that it is “currently unable to reasonably estimate the financial impact from the incident or the amount of insurance recoveries we may receive.” On Thursday, David Zinsner, the chief financial officer, put the lost revenue at about $600 million over two quarters, CNBC reported.

The filing also says Intel’s ability to mitigate supply constraints “such as those with respect to memory, is very limited.” Demand for its PC chips fell in the third quarter from the first half on “higher component prices, particularly memory,” tight IT budgets and leaner inventories, Intel wrote: “We expect these trends to worsen in Q4 2026 and persist in 2027.” In Thursday’s release Mr. Zinsner said that “we see the PC slowdown continuing at least through the first half of next year,” though he said Intel remains “optimistic about the opportunities across our broader portfolio.”

Intel says it has the money it needs. “We believe we have sufficient sources of funding to meet our business requirements for the next 12 months and in the longer term,” the filing says. It held $54.0 billion of cash and short-term investments on Sept. 26, against $50.1 billion of debt.

Analysts at D.A. Davidson cut Intel to neutral from buy on Friday, in a report titled “Not fixed yet,” CNBC reported. “We understand the PC market is being impacted at the industry level,” they wrote. “However it is hard to justify the current multiple when weakness is so significant.”

Key to the turnaround led by Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s chief executive since March 2025, is its foundry business, CNBC noted. Outside customers brought Intel Foundry $411 million of its $6.7 billion of revenue in the third quarter, up from $32 million a year earlier, mainly because of a non-recurring foundry contract, the filing says. How far and how fast Intel builds for its next process, Intel 14A, will depend on committed demand from its own products and on design wins with “potential significant external customers,” it says. “We’re going to have a couple of customers ready to announce the next two quarters,” Mr. Tan said on the call, as quoted by CNBC. Mike Dickson, head of research and quantitative strategies at Horizon Investments, put some of the selling down to profit taking. “A lot of these names, Intel is no exception, they just had a phenomenal year already. So, there’s definitely some profit taking as a result,” he said, as quoted by CNN.

A lot of these names, Intel is no exception, they just had a phenomenal year already.

The Week Ahead

“Investors’ concerns about the AI boom rattled other semiconductor chipmakers,” CNN reported. Sandisk fell 13.47 percent, Broadcom 5.48 percent, Micron 5.30 percent and Nvidia 4.22 percent.NVDANasdaq204.64▼9.02−4.2%Nvidia · Friday’s session The chip index ended October at 10,688.80.The Chip Index’s MonthThe PHLX Semiconductor index closed at 12,628.62 on Sept. 30. Friday’s close left it down 15.36 percent for October.

AMD, Qualcomm and Arm traded at more than twice Thursday’s volume. All three have businesses in phones or PCs as well as data centers: AMD describes its technology as powering “cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming.” In February, after their quarterly reports, shares of Qualcomm and Arm both slid in late trading “amid concerns about memory supply constraints,” SiliconANGLE reported; Qualcomm’s chief financial officer, Akash Palkhiwala, tied its weak forecast to memory supply.Qualcomm on MemoryCristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s chief executive, told CNBC in February that “memory is going to define the size of the mobile market,” SiliconANGLE reported.

Apple reports first, with a call at 5 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Nov. 2; AMD reports after the market closes on Tuesday, Nov. 3, Election Day; Qualcomm and Arm follow on Wednesday, Nov. 4; and Nvidia holds its call on Nov. 17. Closer to hand is Kiryat Gat, where Intel’s filing expected operations to resume by the end of October.