NEW YORK, January 21, 2026, 10:41 (EST)
- Intel is set to report fourth-quarter results after the market close on Thursday, with options implying an about 8% move.
- Wall Street expects revenue of $13.4 billion and adjusted EPS of 8 cents, with the data center unit seen growing sharply.
- A fresh analyst upgrade has pushed targets higher even as much of the Street stays cautious.
Intel investors are bracing for a volatile earnings week, with options markets pricing an about 8% move in the chipmaker’s shares after it reports quarterly results on Thursday. Options are contracts investors use to hedge — or bet on — near-term swings.
The report lands at an awkward moment: the stock has been running, and the turnaround story has picked up fresh believers. Intel’s shares have climbed in recent months, but expectations are climbing too, and a miss could land harder.
The backdrop is bigger than one quarter. Chief executive Lip-Bu Tan has been pitching a reset after years of stumbles, and investors are watching for proof that the company can benefit from the boom in AI-linked data center buildouts while it tries to fix its manufacturing.
Traders’ “up-or-down” math is simple. An 8% move from Tuesday’s close near $49 would put the stock around $52 on the upside or about $44 on the downside, levels options pricing implied. Analysts tracked by Visible Alpha expect $13.4 billion in revenue, down about 6% from a year earlier, and adjusted profit of 8 cents a share, down from 13 cents.
Seaport Research Partners raised the bar this week, upgrading Intel to “buy” and setting a $65 price target, Barron’s reported. The firm pointed to Intel’s “Panther Lake” processors and the company’s 18A manufacturing push, while noting its foundry business — chipmaking for outside customers — is still losing money. Barron’s
Intel’s earnings are expected to show that demand for its traditional server chips is improving as large tech firms expand data centers for AI workloads. Revenue in the data center business is expected to rise more than 30% to $4.43 billion for the quarter ended December, according to LSEG-compiled data cited in recent reporting. Sales in the PC unit are expected to edge up to $8.21 billion.
“It’s the most optimistic… people have felt about the company in a long time,” said Ryuta Makino, an analyst at Gabelli Funds. He expects pricing power to improve, pointing to “at least a double-digit” server CPU (central processing unit) price hike in 2026.
But the same old problems still show up on the checklist. Intel has been losing share in PCs to rivals such as AMD and Arm-based chips, and higher memory prices risk cooling demand for new laptops; “memory accounts for 25% to 30% of PC bill of materials,” UBS wrote, warning that PC demand could moderate.
Investors also keep coming back to manufacturing, because that is where Intel has the most to prove — and the most to lose. The company has started shipping “Panther Lake” PC chips made on its new 18A process, and prior PC chips leaned more on an outside contractor.
The risk is that the process is not ready at scale. Intel has said yields — the share of usable chips per silicon wafer — are improving monthly, but quality and output remain a focus, and analysts expect adjusted gross margin, a measure of profitability after production costs, to slip to about 36.5% for the December quarter.
Some on Wall Street are still wary about the stock’s sensitivity to headlines. Wedbush said this week that Intel’s recent news flow has had “seemingly disproportionate impacts on the stock,” and flagged competition and the threat of weaker PC demand as memory prices rise.
