Friday, August 30th 2024

Report: Intel Could Spin Out Foundry Business or Cancel Some Expansion Plans to Control Losses

According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Intel is in talks with investment banks about a possible spin-out of its foundry business, as well as scraping some existing expansion plans to cut losses. As the report highlights, sources close to Intel noted that the company is exploring various ways to deal with the recent Q2 2024 earnings report. While Intel's revenues are in decline, they are still high. However, the profitability of running its business has declined so much that the company is now operating on a net loss, with an astonishing $1.61 billion in the red. CEO Pat Gelsinger is now exploring various ways to control these losses and make the 56-year-old giant profitable again. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are reportedly advising Intel about its future moves regarding the foundry business and overall operations.

The Intel Foundry unit represents the biggest consumer of the company's funds, as the expansion plans across the US and Europe are costing Intel billions of US Dollars. Even though the company receives various state subsidies to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities, it still has to put much of its capital to work. Given that the company is running tight on funds, some of these expansion plans that are not business-critical may get scraped. Additionally, running the foundry business is also turning out to be rather costly, with Q2 2024 recording a negative 65.5% operating margin. Separating Intel Product and Intel Foundry may be an option, or even selling the foundry business as a whole is on the table. Whatever happens next is yet to be cleared up. During the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference on Thursday, Pat Gelsinger also noted that "It's been a difficult few weeks" for Intel, with many employees getting laid off to try to establish new cost-saving measures.
Source: Bloomberg
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113 Comments on Report: Intel Could Spin Out Foundry Business or Cancel Some Expansion Plans to Control Losses

#51
Hecate91
lasRyzen 1000 and 2000 sucked, especially for gaming, 7/5nm TSMC is the reason Ryzen became good

Intel has been competing just fine, using worse nodes for years now, imagine when they get node-advantage again, which is very soon
Ryzen 1000 and 2000 series got Intel to finally move off of years of stagnation with quad cores to 6 and 8 cores, architectural improvements is why Zen 3 was a massive improvement over Zen 1 & Zen 2.
You must be an Intel shareholder, Intel "competing just fine" stretched their processors well past the limit needing to push power higher and higher to compete with AMD.
Posted on Reply
#52
las
R-T-BNot really, but ok. I had one. Hardly sucked.
Yes they did, 8700K destroyed them, especially post OC, my 8700K ran 5.2 GHz and obliterated any 1000/2000 chip in gaming, which barely got to 4.1 GHz on average

12nm GloFo is terrible compard to Intel 14nm
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#53
Daven
lasYes they did, 8700K destroyed them, especially post OC, my 8700K ran 5.2 GHz and obliterated any 1000/2000 chip in gaming, which barely got to 4.1 GHz on average

12nm GloFo is terrible compard to Intel 14nm
And look how all that turned out of Intel. If you need reminding, please read the article for which we are commenting.
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#54
las
Hecate91Ryzen 1000 and 2000 series got Intel to finally move off of years of stagnation with quad cores to 6 and 8 cores, architectural improvements is why Zen 3 was a massive improvement over Zen 1 & Zen 2.
You must be an Intel shareholder, Intel "competing just fine" stretched their processors well past the limit needing to push power higher and higher to compete with AMD.
Yeah Im an Intel shareholder now, after the big drop, with the turn around coming

Also bought up Nvidia stock in abundance back in 2018

Have AMD too, pretty much all tech companies in my portfolio, in huge amounts

My Intel stock will be at several hundred percent gain in a few years, just wait and see, turnaround incoming
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#55
MacZ
lasYes they did, 8700K destroyed them
And now Intel is destroying its own microprocessors. What a beast Intel is.
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#56
las
MacZAnd now Intel is destroying its own microprocessors. What a beast Intel is.
Nah motherboard vendors did, just like motherboard vendors fried 7000X3D chips

No-one really cares, Intel raised warranty

Arrow Lake 3nm incoming, next gen is soon here

9800X3D or 285K/265K for me ASAP plus a RTX 5090

Talk less, try more
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#57
Daven
lasYeah Im an Intel shareholder now, after the big drop, with the turn around coming

Also bought up Nvidia stock in abundance back in 2018

Have AMD too, pretty much all tech companies in my portfolio, in huge amounts

My Intel stock will be at several hundred percent gain in a few years, just wait and see, turnaround incoming
Yep that turnaround is coming any second now...lololol

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#58
Kn0xxPT
The last thing we want ... is Samsung making CPU's ... they are not good guys... even Nvidia regreted using them... no matter how cheaper it is.

in regards of Intel vs AMD, its known that Server clusters main used intel for performance, and investment not on thte CPU but in the other parts like RAM.
RAM is a big issues for servers builders. Intel always had the advantage of not relying on RAM speed for performance, something the AMD always strugled.
Faster ram with big capacity isnt cheap ... and AMD eco-system was not the option in this regard.
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#59
Hecate91
lasMy Intel stock will be at several hundred percent gain in a few years, just wait and see, turnaround incoming
I don't see Intel returning to the level they even were at due to their sheer incompetence at fixing the Raptor Lake issues, lots of trust lost in the market, and most consumers don't care what is in their laptop or desktop. The only way Intel has avoided more issues is at the expense of tens of thousands of employees losing jobs and the US taxpayer funding billions to a company that can't even beat AMD, a company a fraction of the size of Intel yet has delivered more innovative and efficient cpu's.
lasNah motherboard vendors did, just like motherboard vendors fried 7000X3D chips

No-one really cares, Intel raised warranty

Arrow Lake 3nm incoming, next gen is soon here
The difference is AMD quickly resolved the issue, with Intel, reviewers are left wondering if the patch even fixed anything.
And the intel fans buying the latest shiny thing might not care, but a processor should be the last thing to fail in a system. Those who are loyal to team blue can go ahead and buy Arrow Lake, personally I'm avoiding anything from Intel for a while given how they've handled 13th & 14th gen issues.
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#60
N/A
I guess they have to close old fabs that can't convert the machines and expand to a completely new building for 14A instead of paying rent to TSMC. How are they going to be more profitable by going homeless and paying rent. It's like admitting they can't clean house while some other entities can and be profitable. That doesn't make sense.
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#61
Daven
N/AI guess they have to close old fabs that can't convert the machines and expand to a completely new building for 14A instead of paying rent to TSMC. How are they going to be more profitable by going homeless and paying rent. It's like admitting they can't clean house while some other entities can and be profitable. That doesn't make sense.
It all comes down to the mighty dollar. Fabs cost money. If you don't have money, you don't have fabs. Don't analyze it any deeper than that.
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#62
NoneRain
As a consumer, that's concerning.
Intel needs to be at their feet to keep pushing the competition and giving alternatives to chip-making.
Hope they'll get their sh1t together, and don't drop important segments.
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#63
ARF
Kn0xxPTThe last thing we want ... is Samsung making CPU's ... they are not good guys... even Nvidia regreted using them... no matter how cheaper it is.
Then, build fabs in China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, maybe on Antarctica, as well?! :nutkick:
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#64
TheDeeGee
NVIDIA CPU's then, because i refuse to ever touch AMD products again.
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#65
MacZ
lasNo-one really cares, Intel raised warranty
Yes : I'm sure that those whose CPU self-destructed by doing nothing extraordinary will just splurge $500+ with Intel again.

Their CPU will maybe self-destruct again, but it will be with _NODE ADVANTAGE_ this time.

Unstoppable Intel. What will they destroy next time ? For their company, it's well underway.
Posted on Reply
#66
RandallFlagg
MacZThe joys of MBA leadership.
The gift that keeps on giving.
Agree with the sentiment, but you picked the wrong target . Gelsinger is an engineer. Lead architect on the 486.

What's more, he started as a tech doing repairs after getting his associates, worked his way through college.

Posted on Reply
#67
MacZ
RandallFlaggAgree with the sentiment, but you picked the wrong target . Gelsinger is an engineer. Lead architect on the 486.

What's more, he started as a tech doing repairs after getting his associates, worked his way through college.

Gelsinger was brought in after the damage was done, to try to mitigate the problems.

From 2005, the game plan of Intel was abusing its dominant position, safely stationned behind its financial moats it thought unassailable (x86/x64) and juicing the share price with share buybacks. The peons were stuck with 4 cores they had to pay a lot for (and be grateful for). There was no real effort to create dGPUs even when Intel was developping iGPUs. So their horizon was the share price of the next quarter or the two next quarters. That way they were caught up and overtaken by AMD, nVidia, Apple ... Now they are scrambling to get back in the race.

When I say MBA leadership, I mean people solely focused on financial results. Same with Boeing, actually.
Posted on Reply
#68
RandallFlagg
MacZGelsinger was brought in after the damage was done, to try to mitigate the problems.

From 2005, the game plan of Intel was abusing its dominant position, safely stationned behind its financial moats it thought unassailable (x86/x64) and juicing the share price with share buybacks. The peons were stuck with 4 cores they had to pay a lot for (and be grateful for). There was no real effort to create dGPUs even when Intel was developping iGPUs. So their horizon was the share price of the next quarter or the two next quarters. That way they were caught up and overtaken by AMD, nVidia, Apple ... Now they are scrambling to get back in the race.

When I say MBA leadership, I mean people solely focused on financial results. Same with Boeing, actually.
Agree. His predecessors traded long term viability for short term profits.
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#69
AnotherReader
RandallFlaggAgree. His predecessors traded long term viability for short term profits.
People like to talk smack about Pat, but he was dealt a bad hand. Intel 7, though it is fine now, took so long to mature that it hamstrung them, and that problem has its genesis before his tenure as CEO. Pat, to his credit, stopped share buybacks in 2021. However, I think selling off the fabs would diminish Intel's uniqueness and while it may help shore up financials in the short term, it wouldn't be the right policy in the long term.

Posted on Reply
#70
R-T-B
EternitThey had good multithread performance, but not single thread.
Vs Bulldozer and even SkyLake/Haswell ST wasn't bad either. Was it top notch? No, but abysmal? Hardly.
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#71
LittleBro
So, what if Intel's foundry business is bought by Nvidia?
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#72
AnotherReader
LittleBroSo, what if Intel's foundry business is bought by Nvidia?
Why would Nvidia do that?
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#73
Ayhamb99
RandallFlaggAgree with the sentiment, but you picked the wrong target . Gelsinger is an engineer. Lead architect on the 486.

What's more, he started as a tech doing repairs after getting his associates, worked his way through college.

Even if Gelsinger is an engineer and the CEO, as long as the board of directors of a company have a bunch of MBAs who focus solely on profits, which Intel's board have a bunch of. Gelsinger can't do much because at the end the CEO usually answers to the board. If the majority of the board's focus is on short term or long term profits, Gelsinger can't really do anything.

If anything I feel bad for him, he has to clean up the mess that his predecessors made when they focused so much on short term profits, in turn neglecting future viability and allowing the competition to essentially dropkick them.
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#74
oxrufiioxo
I've seen this story somewhere before.....




Honestly if this happens it isn't good for anyone unless separated from Intel the foundry business flourishes. Gloflo has found their niche for sure but it's not like that has helped us much as consumers as of late. TSMC needs a competitor if not to keep prices in check to at least continue to innovate and push technology forward.
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#75
kondamin
Would be the dumbest move intel could make or the US could have happen.

as I wrote earlier Government should give them a a loan intel can repay when they get trough this rough patch.
As it's just a rough patch because of their expansion spurred on by the US government and the EU
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