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Posted (edited)
20 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

 

When Intel was more dominant, having design and manufacturing under one roof was fine, but the argument now is that if Intel really commits to being a major player in the foundry business, they are going to have trouble persuading their competitors in the processor design space to use them as fabricators and they will need those outside fab customers to pay the rent. Most of these re-org merger/split possibilities got some reportage last fall, but Gelsinger didn't want to split the business. But Gelsinger's out, so.....

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted
On 2/13/2025 at 9:30 PM, Screwball said:

I sure wish I would have bought some INTC stock last week. Chart porn incoming...

This is a 1 year INTC chart by day. Been ugly since last March, until last week. Huge gap (red arrow) and then the rocket shot for the last 4 trading days. Depending on how you measure it, up to 27%, around 25% if you use closing price.

 

On 2/13/2025 at 9:30 PM, Screwball said:

intc1.thumb.JPG.61f42959001b785de1119c40dfc60fc3.JPG

For a pure trader I would let some run, but take some off the table at this point. That gap may fill at 28ish, that would be a 50% rip. Pull the rip cord and thank the market whore for this one and move on.

Let's revisit this little puppy.

intc3.JPG.2b9791cadace806c2d68e13e2b463fe4.JPG

The chart above this one was from the 13th, last Thursday, then took a dive Friday. Got 3 days off and went nuts today. Broke into the area with the red arrow. Great trade if you made it. Of course I didn't.

Posted
1 hour ago, Screwball said:

 

Let's revisit this little puppy.

intc3.JPG.2b9791cadace806c2d68e13e2b463fe4.JPG

The chart above this one was from the 13th, last Thursday, then took a dive Friday. Got 3 days off and went nuts today. Broke into the area with the red arrow. Great trade if you made it. Of course I didn't.

merger speculation? Some analysts yesterday were out there with valuations of a dis-aggregated Intel with the  value over $30/share as pieces. 

Broadcom and TMSC were mentioned as suitors, can't see the Admin allowing TSMC to take an interest in Intel's foundry business though, but maybe the other half if the foundry biz is split off? That doesn't seem to parse either.

  • Like 1
Posted

I'm seeing this on my news feed. Stock is down about 5% today as I type this.
 

Quote

 

09:03 AM EST, 02/19/2025 (MT Newswires) -- (Updates with Silver Lake's response in the third paragraph.)

Intel (INTC) is in talks to sell a majority stake in its programmable chip business, Altera, to buyout firm Silver Lake, multiple news outlets reported Tuesday.

The deal could value Altera at around $9 billion, but the exact size of the stake has yet to be determined, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Silver Lake declined to comment. Intel did not respond to MT Newswires' request for comment.

 

Also

Quote

Broadcom and TSMC exploring deals for parts of Intel, according to WSJ (Bubblevision report).

 

Posted
5 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

TSLA getting hammered for the 2nd time this week. Down 15% since Monday's open.

Not enough dog crap in the world for the Tesla cars in my neighborhood. 

Posted
24 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

TSLA getting hammered for the 2nd time this week. Down 15% since Monday's open.

 

There were a disturbing number of Teslas in the parking lot of my gym yesterday.

Posted
1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

 

The funny bit (IMHO) with Intel is how we get these periodic flurries of merger/divestment stories and then nothing happens. I'm beginning to wonder if Intel is encouraging the talk on purpose to reduce investor pressure exactly because they prefer to stay as they are. I think it was true that Gelsinger did not want to break up the company. Of course that may all change in a hurry once a new CEO is named. And of course the other thing to remember is that with several players looking to buy a piece of Intel (at the best possible price). there are also the same number of players and their associates with an interest in downplaying Intel's prospects. Like some of the downstream commenters on this post, I would be at least a little sceptical that anyone outside Intel as any of their real yield data - good or bad.

Posted
1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

The funny bit (IMHO) with Intel is how we get these periodic flurries of merger/divestment stories and then nothing happens. I'm beginning to wonder if Intel is encouraging the talk on purpose to reduce investor pressure exactly because they prefer to stay as they are. I think it was true that Gelsinger did not want to break up the company. Of course that may all change in a hurry once a new CEO is named. And of course the other thing to remember is that with several players looking to buy a piece of Intel (at the best possible price). there are also the same number of players and their associates with an interest in downplaying Intel's prospects. Like some of the downstream commenters on this post, I would be at least a little sceptical that anyone outside Intel as any of their real yield data - good or bad.

I agree Intel would never leak those numbers.  But there are a lot of vendors on site during these runs and those people will absolutely leak.

ASML will have a bunch of people on site.  The machine Intel is using is built by ASML (obviously) and its their newest model and the first one of that model.  Last I knew there is a German company that is the only one who can make the laser they use.  Those folks will leak.

Posted
2 hours ago, Deleterious said:

I agree Intel would never leak those numbers.  But there are a lot of vendors on site during these runs and those people will absolutely leak.

ASML will have a bunch of people on site.  The machine Intel is using is built by ASML (obviously) and its their newest model and the first one of that model.  Last I knew there is a German company that is the only one who can make the laser they use.  Those folks will leak.

I have no clue how trustworthy people are in the semi-conductor biz so could be.  I can say that a counter-point would be that the company I worked for in oil industry services had contracts with all the majors, we had everyone's data, we never shared anything with anyone - there was an ethic - you just didn't do it. Of course, the business was not high profile enough anymore to have media types banging down the door trying to pry something loose either!

  • Like 1
Posted

I do not have a tough time believing the 20%-30% yield numbers. But some might overreact reading them.

That podcast I linked to a few weeks ago about Morris Chang told an interesting story from his days (late 60's) as the guy running fabs for Texas Instrument. TI was cutting edge back then and they would expend massive amounts of capital to set up these new fabs.  They wanted an ROI on that capital so they would charge a premium price for the newest toy on the market. That limited the number of orders and meant they were not running at full capacity.

Chang had big problems with this and went to his bosses. He said we are going about this all wrong. We will never work out the kinks if we only run sporadically. It is essential that we operate at maximum capacity to achieve the necessary yields. We must run waste to figure out what the actual problems are and if our attempts at fixing them worked or not. You cannot do that with an idle line.

It appears that this is occurring with Intel.  They only ran 30,000 wafers in this testing period. TSMC claims its new plant in Arizona can run over 20,000 wafers a month. So, Intel only has one and a half months of running time to go from. This amount appears modest given the complexity of the process.

Posted

I posted this in a different area of the board a few months ago.  But it fits here pretty well.

WSJ article about the only company on earth that makes the equipment that TSMC, Intel, etc. use to make semiconductors. 

It’s the Most Indispensable Machine in the World—and It Depends on This Woman

A few things about the process that just make me shake my head.

Quote

ASML teamed up with a German optical company to develop mirrors so flat that if they were scaled up to the size of Germany itself, their largest imperfection would be less than a millimeter.  

The precision of EUV machines is comparable to directing a laser beam from your house and hitting a ping-pong ball on the moon.   

 

Posted (edited)
47 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

They only ran 30,000 wafers in this testing period. TSMC claims its new plant in Arizona can run over 20,000 wafers a month. So, Intel only has one and a half months of running time to go from. This amount appears modest given the complexity of the process.

That would go back to the argument that in this semi-conductor world, your either design, or you fab, but doing both is going to either leave you without enough fab customers or without enough ROI on your fab capability - it's the basic argument to break Intel up. I'm not necessarily throwing in with that view - just offering that as a view that has a lot of currency right now. And it goes back to the customer trust issue. All those oil companies trusted us with their data at least in part because we did not compete directly with them - we had no dog in the fight of who was doing things better, our job was just to help them do whatever it was they were doing. Maybe Intel's fab people are the most upright in the world and maybe the corporate divisional firewall is the best ever, it's still has to be a harder sell to get your design competitors to use your fab. Not impossible, but it adds another complexity. Of course it will help a lot overcoming those reservations if they end up being able to offer best in class. There certainly are companies that do successfully both contract to and compete with their customers in other industries and there are other synergies to having both units under one umbrella.

In any case, if the fabs prove out, they are going to make a lot of money, if they lag the company likely gets broken up and the current share holders will likely realize a premium - so I'm not surprised the stock seems found a support level despite the doom and gloom that continues to swell around it.

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted

We all know they are depending on Uncle Sam to take care of those problems.  They will lean hard on American companies to use Intel if they ever get their stuff together.  And they should because it does become a national defense issue.

 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

holding pattern.

The Fed is also up in the air about "QT" (the unwind of all the QE done starting with the crash). According to this month's Fed minutes there is debate about slowing or stopping the rate of asset sales because of concerns about fiscal decisions and overall bank reserves.. QT is fundamentally deflationary, so slowing/ending it will be inflationary relative to the current rate of asset sales. Of course when they get to the asset level they want it's going to stop anyway but the target wasn't supposed to be reached till at least late this year.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/feds-quantitative-tightening-expectations-upended-by-debt-ceiling-worries-2025-02-26/

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted
2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

holding pattern.


Numbers - In Line

Income - Up

Spending - Down

Markets - Unsure

Nobody knows if the tariffs are just a political game and will be called off last minute again or will they actually happen.  

Posted

But there are political points to be made. That's more important. That's why we tried to keep this thread separate from all the other stupid horse**** posted elsewhere. Look at that cesspool of slop.

This is the third iteration of this board. At one time it was good place for intelligent conversation, both political and investment (although filtered from the first).  How far it has fallen. It has become aisle lunatic and mostly unreadable, which is why hardly anyone posts here anymore. The investment thread in particular had some really good participants - all gone now.

A fish stinks from the head down.

  • Like 1

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