It’s a good news and bad news scenario for chip stock Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) as its new Lunar Lake processors look to take on some of the biggest names around. But at the same time, this new potent line of chips may not be enough going forward. This odd dichotomy hurt Intel in Tuesday afternoon’s trading, as shares were down modestly.
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The latest reports suggest that the new Lunar Lake lineup will be able to match up and even exceed the capabilities of the upcoming Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) Snapdragon X Elite line. That’s raising some eyebrows because the Snapdragon X Elite was supposed to be a pretty potent line of hardware in its own right. Intel’s general manager of the Client Performance Marketing Lab, Dan Rogers, noted that the Lunar Lake line is not only improving performance but also delivering battery life. Specifically, Rogers noted, “…in the biggest way that we’ve done in X86 architecture.”
A Near Miss
That’s when Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) threw a bit of a wrench in the works for Intel. Microsoft released the specs for its Copilot+ AI PC project, but it’s going to take some pretty serious hardware to handle it. For starters, 16 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage are necessary to run the system. It’s also going to require a neural processing unit (NPU) with 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) capacity.
Right now, only one processor can do that: the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus, which can run at 45 TOPS. However, reports note that the Lunar Lake will at least match the 45 TOPS rate of the Snapdragons, with total TOPS from NPU, CPU, and GPU actually clearing 100.
Is Intel a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on three Buys, 26 Holds, and three Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 6.11% rally in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $37.87 per share implies 19.65% upside potential.
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