Rebuilding Intel: Q1 Results to Reveal Tan's Blueprint for Reversing Decline

[Nomad76]

Intel is at a crossroads as the company prepares to report earnings on April 24, 2025. Investors are hoping that Lip-Bu Tan, Intel's new CEO, can turn the company's fortunes around and stem its revenue losses. Currently, Intel is projected to report its fourth straight quarter of revenue decline with a 3.4% revenue loss, according to Reuters, and expects a significant widening of its losses to approximately $945 million compared with a loss of $381 million a year ago. Intel continues to lose market share to AMD in both personal computing and data center markets, while NVIDIA dominates the highly lucrative AI chip market. In addition, Intel's PC division is likely to report an 11% revenue decrease to $6.73 billion, and its data center business is probably facing its twelfth consecutive quarter of declines. "The most important thing for Intel now is Lip-Bu Tan's playbook... How he can give investors confidence that he is the person who can turn Intel around and whether a turnaround is possible in the first place," said Hendi Susanto, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, which holds Intel shares.

Tan has been implementing sweeping changes as part of his turnaround plan, cutting more than 20% of the employees at Intel and a change in the leadership model to provide quicker decisions. The company is seeing significant geopolitical threats as U.S.-China trade tensions are rolling back. China is threatening to impose retaliatory tariffs of up to 85% on all chips produced in the U.S. and along these lines has also imposed a requirement for licenses to sell some high-end AI products to the Chinese customers. Likely, as part of this, the company is presumed to be moving the production of its 3 nm chips from Arizona to Ireland in late 2025. Under all of these factors, Intel could eventually receive a temporary boost if PC shipments are pulled forward ahead of these tariffs that may ultimately positively impact a significant portion of Intel's sales (nearly one-third of total revenues).



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[john_]

Intel poised to slash more than 20% of workforce – report

 

[Sol_Badguy]

Tan has been implementing sweeping changes as part of his turnaround plan, cutting more than 20% of the employees at Intel and a change in the leadership model to provide quicker decisions.

Great plan, I'm sure it'll make a world of difference for us.
Here's some free advice.
Cut the price for 285K by at least $50.
Put pressure on Microsoft to make further Windows optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on other big software players (like Adobe) to implement optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on game developers to optimize game engines in order to increase Arrow Lake performance.
Oh and cut the price on that 285K.

 

[blinnbanir]

Great plan, I'm sure it'll make a world of difference for us.
Here's some free advice.
Cut the price for 285K by at least $50.
Put pressure on Microsoft to make further Windows optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on other big software players (like Adobe) to implement optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on game developers to optimize game engines in order to increase Arrow Lake performance.
Oh and cut the price on that 285K.

I agree it makes no sense that the 285K is more expensive than the 9950X. It is like they forgot how to fight a product War.

Intel poised to slash more than 20% of workforce – report

Typical new CEO response.

 

[watzupken]

It’s amazing when the CEO just joined Intel for a month or 2 and the whole world is expecting some miracle from him.

 

[bonehead123]

Intel poised to slash more than 20% of workforce – report

As ALWAYS, it's the little people who are made to suffer for the exec's bad decisions and failed/delayed/nono-competitive product launches....

Here's some thoughts:

1) Eliminate massive bonuses, expense accounts & golden parachutes for the executive branch
2) Sell off a few company jets/yatchs/beach houses/mistresses & use that money to either pay down their debt or invest in new equipment, new fabs in the US, OR even better, increased salaries/benefits for the above little people

Yea yea, I know these are pipe dreams, but just sayin......gut da fat or da fat will gut you

IF Mr. Tan can do even part of these, he could be a keeper, if not, kick him to da curb & get someone who will !

 

[Quicks]

As ALWAYS, it's the little people who are made to suffer for the exec's bad decisions and failed/delayed/nono-competitive product launches....

Here's some thoughts:

1) Eliminate massive bonuses, expense accounts & golden parachutes for the executive branch
2) Sell off a few company jets/yatchs/beach houses/mistresses & use that money to either pay down their debt or invest in new equipment, new fabs in the US, OR even better, increased salaries/benefits for the above little people

Yea yea, I know these are pipe dreams, but just sayin......gut da fat or da fat will gut you

IF Mr. Tan can do even part of these, he could be a keeper, if not, kick him to da curb & get someone who will !

Well Intel employ a crazy amount of people from ~140K down to even ~95K is still almost 4X more than AMD employs.

 

[Sol_Badguy]

@blinnbanir

Yesterday I've elaborated a bit on that here.
The price cut is long overdue just like that Boost thingy from yesterday, both should've been put into effect alongside those microcode updates.
Those layoffs are cost-cutting measures (which admittedly do help), but they need to SELL.
This architecture needs to be milked to the max, I'm not convinced they did.
Linux performance apparently has improved since launch day, this is good news, keep it up!

 

[blinnbanir]

@blinnbanir

Yesterday I've elaborated a bit on that here.
The price cut is long overdue just like that Boost thingy from yesterday, both should've been put into effect alongside those microcode updates.
Those layoffs are cost-cutting measures (which admittedly do help), but they need to SELL.
This architecture needs to be milked to the max, I'm not convinced they did.
Linux performance apparently has improved since launch day, this is good news, keep it up!

Excellent post. It sums it up pretty good too. The layoffs are not really that but firings. It is too bad because the reality is that Intel is still way bigger than AMD in other markets but that too is changing with the ability to buy and APU based laptop for cheap. Last time I went to the PC store there were AMD APU laptops but they were all the same weak as 5300G laptops but the prices were stupid. Intel need to get someone to make an all Intel laptop and market it for Content Creation.

 

[pressing on]

Well Intel employ a crazy amount of people from ~140K down to even ~95K is still almost 4X more than AMD employs.

Intel reported the number of employees as part of the Q4 2024 results. It was "...108,900 people as of December 28, 2024".

Intel and SK Hynix finalised the NAND business (Optane) deal at the end of March 2025. Intel got $1.9 billion, SK Hynix got the IP and the 4,000 employees from the NAND business remaining on the Intel payroll. So Intel employees number is now around 105,000 and apparently heading for something like 85,000. AMD's 2024 number was 28,000 so yes, still a big difference.

 

[Dragokar]

Great plan, I'm sure it'll make a world of difference for us.
Here's some free advice.
Cut the price for 285K by at least $50.
Put pressure on Microsoft to make further Windows optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on other big software players (like Adobe) to implement optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on game developers to optimize game engines in order to increase Arrow Lake performance.
Oh and cut the price on that 285K.

Don't give companies free advice, they will ignore it until you slap a hefty price on it, covered under PR speech and business advisory stuff.

 

[ZoneDymo]

"Tan has been implementing sweeping changes as part of his turnaround plan, cutting more than 20% of the employees at Intel "

and I feel that is exactly the problem.....say what you want about Gelzinger, I believe the man had a plan and a vision, but the company got cold feet so yeah...lets change it all again and begin with firing the little guy that actually does the work....that will surely work, totally unique for a new ceo to do as well......

Christ Intel, get a freaking grip

Great plan, I'm sure it'll make a world of difference for us.
Here's some free advice.
Cut the price for 285K by at least $50.
Put pressure on Microsoft to make further Windows optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on other big software players (like Adobe) to implement optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on game developers to optimize game engines in order to increase Arrow Lake performance.
Oh and cut the price on that 285K.

Would that price cut you think suddenly make people buy Intel? and then specifically that Intel chip/platform where you know you will have zero upgrade path so when a new cpu comes out that might actually be worth a damn that would mean a totally new system for the end user yet again....I say ArrowLake is dead personally, no need to invest in that anymore.

How....would intel put pressure on MS? MS is currently flirting with ARM/Qualcom for Windows OS...Intel is desperately trying to convince the world x86 still has some fight left in it.
If anything instead of "putting pressure" Intel should put in the work and deliver that on a silver platter to MS/Adobe/Game Devs, send their engineers in to help optimise for their platform at Intel's expense.

But that would be an investment and it seems like any investment (which leads to negative profit numbers) scares these idiots off...better to just fire some people to atleast make that number go up again...with ofcourse no future for the company but ehhh short time goals ftw!

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Great plan, I'm sure it'll make a world of difference for us.
Here's some free advice.
Cut the price for 285K by at least $50.
Put pressure on Microsoft to make further Windows optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on other big software players (like Adobe) to implement optimizations that help Arrow Lake.
Put pressure on game developers to optimize game engines in order to increase Arrow Lake performance.
Oh and cut the price on that 285K.

I don’t think Intel has as strong of an arm to strong arm MS and devs anymore, and I don’t think anyone believes in Arrow Lake. It looks to be a one-off product, so why bother optimizing for a poorly selling architecture that will probably get scrapped as soon as they can make something better?

 

[Sol_Badguy]

Would that price cut you think suddenly make people buy Intel? and then specifically that Intel chip/platform where you know you will have zero upgrade path so when a new cpu comes out that might actually be worth a damn that would mean a totally new system for the end user yet again....I say ArrowLake is dead personally, no need to invest in that anymore.

If it's close enough to 7950X and far enough from 9950X yes it can definitely sway SOME people at least.
And what else is there on offer? Raptor Lake? Isn't that dead as well? Might as well push the new platform instead of the one before it.
No offense but personally I'm fed up with that "upgrade path" argument. Okay maybe some people care, I don't, I care for what I'm getting when the new build is assembled and fired up, not for hypothetical benefits some years away (benefits that do not affect my day to day experience during those years).
I'm not going to buy the platform that has less bang for the buck just because it offers me an "upgrade path" later. How many people that currently have a 7600X (no disrespect meant) do you expect to upgrade to a "10950X" on their $150 B650 mobo (again no disrespect meant)?

How....would intel put pressure on MS? MS is currently flirting with ARM/Qualcom for Windows OS...Intel is desperately trying to convince the world x86 still has some fight left in it.
If anything instead of "putting pressure" Intel should put in the work and deliver that on a silver platter to MS/Adobe/Game Devs, send their engineers in to help optimise for their platform at Intel's expense.

Poor choice of words perhaps, it's not like I meant Intel was going to give MS a spanking, a wedgie or something along those lines.
Collaborate yes, but be assertive, or even slightly aggressive about working together on improvements not act like they're asking for a favor or charity.

I don’t think Intel has as strong of an arm to strong arm MS and devs anymore, and I don’t think anyone believes in Arrow Lake. It looks to be a one-off product, so why bother optimizing for a poorly selling architecture that will probably get scrapped as soon as they can make something better?

It all starts with the manufacturer. If Intel acts like it doubts its own products then why would we expect other parties to be enthusiastic about it?
As the saying goes fake it till you make it. Intel should at least fake being confident about Arrow Lake until it achieves its goal.
And if the improvements happen and they're marketed properly people will believe and will start buying.

I can see a different tactic here if I'm being honest, if they abandon the platform early and work exclusively on something else then when the new platform is launched and performs clearly better than Arrow Lake they can brag about how big the improvements are, when in reality the results will be skewed by them not improving Arrow Lake enough to reach closer to its full potential.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

Intel reported the number of employees as part of the Q4 2024 results. It was "...108,900 people as of December 28, 2024".

Intel and SK Hynix finalised the NAND business (Optane) deal at the end of March 2025. Intel got $1.9 billion, SK Hynix got the IP and the 4,000 employees from the NAND business remaining on the Intel payroll. So Intel employees number is now around 105,000 and apparently heading for something like 85,000. AMD's 2024 number was 28,000 so yes, still a big difference.

I don't think it's fair to just compare the employee quantity between the two because of Intel's foundry business. If they had it broken out between foundry and "other" employees, you could possibly compare the other employees to AMD, but with AMD not having foundries, this is a harsh comparison that isn't "apples to apples".

 

[Random_User]

Well Intel employ a crazy amount of people from ~140K down to even ~95K is still almost 4X more than AMD employs.

Do you imply, that by reducing the workforce amount to the AMD levels, would automatically, and proportionally increase Intel's "successfulness"?
I doubt the AMD's lower amount of staff, make them superior to Intel... Intel must search for the solution elsewhere... maybe by looking at the mirror.

Spoiler

And NO! Not this mirror

It’s amazing when the CEO just joined Intel for a month or 2 and the whole world is expecting some miracle from him.

He's just two month at the company, and already does the same mistakes, and goes the same route as the predcessors.
The number one change should be- stop pleasing investors/shareholders. This has already shown to be what turned Intel in the flaming dumpster.

The only hope, is if the 18A will prove to be superior node... and to make the working condition much humane, than the rival µ-arch companies.

 

[TheEndIsNear]

I think the only thing that is going to work is the new fab being better than tsmc. Oh and it's nice they have a ceo invested in the Chinese military. It would be hilarious if that new tech somehow found its way there because we are the dumbest country on earth even before this election.

 

[bgx]

18A does not need to be superior.

Competitive would be already very good.
The main problem now is that Intel is paying tens of billions for fabs already there and building others while not even using them but paying tsmc instead!

Using their fabs (which means that the process is competitive) would already save them billions, and it would make them easily profitable.

I think that's likely to happen, but we can wait to see panther lake, we wont have to wait too long.
In the meantime, I dont believe tommorow s results are going to be very good (may be althera selling will make intel overall having benefit, but without this exceptional income, they will be loosing heavy money again).

 

[truthsayer]

18A does not need to be superior.

Competitive would be already very good.
The main problem now is that Intel is paying tens of billions for fabs already there and building others while not even using them but paying tsmc instead!

Using their fabs (which means that the process is competitive) would already save them billions, and it would make them easily profitable.

I think that's likely to happen, but we can wait to see panther lake, we wont have to wait too long.
In the meantime, I dont believe tommorow s results are going to be very good (may be althera selling will make intel overall having benefit, but without this exceptional income, they will be loosing heavy money again).

The problem is that "competitiveness" is not just silicone performance, it also includes "time to market", "how quick can volume be ramped up".
All of those are historical problems with Intel manufacturing starting from 14nm, so yes, "18A being competitive would be very good", GIVEN that we are referring to the widest definition of "competitiveness".

 

[Scrizz]

Well Intel employ a crazy amount of people from ~140K down to even ~95K is still almost 4X more than AMD employs.

The huge part of them are in the fab side of things... something AMD doesn't have.

 

[bgx]

The problem is that "competitiveness" is not just silicone performance, it also includes "time to market", "how quick can volume be ramped up".
All of those are historical problems with Intel manufacturing starting from 14nm, so yes, "18A being competitive would be very good", GIVEN that we are referring to the widest definition of "competitiveness".

agreed, and that's what I had in mind too.
Of course, cost (yiled being an integral part of) is an important part of the equation. If its cheaper to build at TSMC than in Intel (which may have been the case for intel 2 / Arrowlake), then it makes no sense to use intel s fab.

 

[Quicks]

The huge part of them are in the fab side of things... something AMD doesn't have.

TSMC basically makes all the cutting edge chips for everyone in the world and still has less people employed.

 

[Scrizz]

TSMC basically makes all the cutting edge chips for everyone in the world and still has less people employed.

Intel has more fabs than TSMC

 

[HOkay]

No offense but personally I'm fed up with that "upgrade path" argument. Okay maybe some people care, I don't, I care for what I'm getting when the new build is assembled and fired up, not for hypothetical benefits some years away (benefits that do not affect my day to day experience during those years).
I'm not going to buy the platform that has less bang for the buck just because it offers me an "upgrade path" later. How many people that currently have a 7600X (no disrespect meant) do you expect to upgrade to a "10950X" on their $150 B650 mobo (again no disrespect meant)?

I can only give my anecdotal experience, but every person I know that builds a desktop either is, or would, buy an AMD CPU atm, & a part of that is definitely the upgrade path. Me included. I bought into AM5 because it's good today, & also because I know I'll be able to drop in a couple of generations newer chip later if I want to. It doesn't have to buy a higher in the stack chip.
My partner's build for example, went from a 3600 to a 5700X3D, a lovely cheap upgrade with a big performance impact & the AM4 platform prevented the need to get a new motherboard. I think this is what a lot of people now expect from their desktops.

 

[Sol_Badguy]

@HOkay

I'm glad that it was a positive experience.
I admit that I exaggerated, going from 7600X to a 10700X is a more likely upgrade. It remains to be seen how issue-free the experience will be for most users considering a two generation gap in such a scenario. But anyway I'm sure that AMD will make it work otherwise they wouldn't take the risk.

However I still don't feel okay about the scenario in which a platform costs more initially just because it has that upgrade path taken into account. If it costs the same then yeah you can say it has more features for the same price therefore more value, but as we can already see AMD isn't shy about charging a premium if the odds are in their favor. The whole "good guy AMD giving us more for less" is a thing of the past, AMD would also do the same in the GPU segment if the situation would be different. Plus the idea of backwards compatibility also implies some degree of holding back certain features in the future, therefore the usual costs of R&D that accompany a brand new product don't fully apply here.

So I still argue that the main factor influencing a purchase decision is how much bang-per-buck you get (compared to the competition) at the moment of purchase.