Chip stock Intel (INTC) has not had a good run lately, but with a new year comes new hope. And this year, a lot of people—including Intel investors—are hoping that artificial intelligence (AI) sparks a comeback for Intel instead of the loss it did in 2024. But Intel shares are down fractionally in Monday afternoon’s trading, suggesting there is not much hope held out on that end either.
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Currently, the AI accelerator market is Nvidia’s (NVDA) to lose, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is making some significant inroads therein as well. But Intel could not even manage to sell $500 million worth of AI accelerators, a dismal showing at best. Throw in market share losses elsewhere and the news, overall, is not good.
But new reports suggest that Intel’s product roadmap is starting to look oddly tangled, with the Gaudi AI accelerator and the Max GPU not getting extended in favor of the Falcon Shores ship, which will be a “traditional GPU that will…integrate some of Gaudi’s unique features,” noted reports. But with Falcon Shores not set to hit until late 2025, that will be most of another year that Intel’s rivals in the field get the field mostly to themselves.
Analysts Yawn
And Intel is not getting much help from analysts, either. Yahoo Finance recently brought out a report saying that Intel landed only a Neutral rating from Citi analyst Christopher Danely. Intel’s focus on the desktop market is not serving it particularly well, as PC demand is expected to continue to be “sluggish” going forward.
Meanwhile, any hope for pulling extra sales from notebook demand—where AMD often leads Intel anyway—will be somewhat dashed. Danely looks for just a 10% decline in notebook shipments in the first quarter, which is quite a bit ahead of the normal drop of 14% in the first quarter. While December performance was better than expected, demand trends are still somewhat “sluggish” overall.
Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on one Buy, 21 Holds and five Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 58.96% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $24.48 per share implies 28.34% upside potential.
