Chip stock Intel (INTC) has faced growing competition and its own internal missteps over the last few months, but a new report out reveals that one factor is less considered, but no less troubling: analyst perspective. And though the news here is less than good, Intel shares surged on other news, up nearly 9% in Friday afternoon’s trading.
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The report noted that sentiment on Intel has been in noticeable decline for the last three months. While no one has been bullish on Intel in that entire time, three months ago, one analyst was at least somewhat bullish. There were more bearish ratings, the report noted, though the clear winner was in the “indifferent” range, with it featuring six different analysts rating Intel as such in the last three months. Two were outright bearish, one was somewhat bearish, and one was somewhat bullish.
Looking at TipRanks’ own data on the subject, Hold ratings are far and away the leader when it comes to analysts ranking Intel. You will see the breakdown more thoroughly at the end of this piece. But suffice it to say Holds lead both Buy and Sell combined by a factor of greater than five to one.
But What About the Elephant in the Room?
Meanwhile, the biggest news today was clearly that Intel was proving a takeover target, based on a report from SemiAccurate, a tech newsletter. The report noted that Intel was, almost certainly, a target of a buyout effort. We have, admittedly, heard this before. We heard back in September that Qualcomm (QCOM) had its eyes on Intel, though Qualcomm ultimately decided to wait before even making the attempt.
And that led MarketWatch to ask if any buyer really “make(s) sense” for Intel. SemiAccurate noted that the potential buyer was not interested in buying chunks of Intel, which Intel has been systematically selling off for months now. No, this buyer wanted the whole shooting match, and this also was not a name we had heard before. And with Intel’s market cap currently around $134 billion, that buyer would have to have very deep pockets to pull off such a trade.
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 four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 53.53% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $24.56 per share implies 15.04% upside potential.
