Intel (INTC) will report its fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, its first such announcement since the company ousted CEO Pat Gelsinger over frustrations with his enormous turnaround effort.
Intel is currently being led by co-CEOs David Zinsner, who also serves as CFO, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who is also CEO of Intel Products. The company is still searching for a permanent CEO to take the reins and attempt to revitalize the storied chipmaker.
Shares of Intel are down a staggering 54% over the last 12 months and reported the largest quarterly loss in its history last quarter. Intel isn’t the only chipmaker hurting, though. Rival AMD (AMD) is down 36% throughout the last year. Nvidia (NVDA), however, continues to gain steam, rising 93% in the last year, despite suffering a massive rout on Monday on the back of worries related to China’s DeepSeek AI.
Intel’s still-nascent foundry business, which both produces chips for Intel and is designed to act as a contract manufacturer for third parties, continues to be a drag on its overall revenue despite announcing agreements to build chips for Amazon’s (AMZN) Amazon Web Services and Microsoft (MSFT).
Intel is expected to report earnings per share of $0.12 on revenue of $13.8 billion in the quarter, according to Bloomberg consensus data. That’s a drop from the $0.54 per share and $15.4 billion in revenue the company reported in Q4 last year.
Intel’s Client Computing business, which includes chips for PCs, is set to top out at $7.8 billion, down from $8.8 billion last year, while its data center business is expected to reach $3.3 billion, down from $3.9 billion last year.
The Intel Foundry business is expected to hit $4.5 billion, up from $291 million in Q4 2023.
Intel is working to build out new facilities to research and construct chips across the US, but the company is dealing with a relatively flat PC market despite promises that AI PCs would help buoy the space in 2024.
According to IDC, PC shipments rose just 1% in 2024, and there’s still plenty of uncertainty about 2025.
“The overall macroeconomic concerns seem to be overshadowing some of the progress and excitement around AI PCs,” Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Device Trackers, said in a statement.
“However, we maintain the view that the impact that on-device AI will have on the industry will be positive, even if the inflection point is delayed.”
The company’s data center business is also struggling to catch up to the likes of Nvidia. While Intel is working to develop its own AI chips, it’s still far behind market leaders, and there’s no clear understanding as to if and when it could catch up.
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