Intel posted a good quarter, guided low, and had its worst day since 1974

Intel beat on its third quarter, with revenue up 21% to $16.5 billion and its strongest data center growth in 15 years. Then it guided fourth-quarter revenue to $15 billion to $16 billion, against roughly $17.1 billion expected, and the stock fell nearly 29% on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, its worst day since July 1974.

This is the AI boom's bill landing on a company that was only half invited to the party. Intel's AI-adjacent business is booming: data center sales up almost 80%, and server chips so in demand that supply is the bottleneck. The catch is that everyone's AI build-out is vacuuming up the world's memory chips, which makes laptops pricier, which means fewer laptops sold, and PCs are still a huge slice of Intel. So a company can post its best data center growth in 15 years and, in the same 24 hours, its worst trading day since the summer of 1974. The bigger read is for the rest of the gadget economy. If memory stays scarce through 2027, Intel is the first big earnings call to say it out loud, not the last. And with Washington holding 10%, a $12 billion paper loss in one day turns a chip story into a political one fast.

Intel reported third-quarter 2026 results after the close on Thursday, Oct. 29. Revenue was $16.5 billion, up 21% from a year earlier. GAAP earnings per share were $0.60. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.52, above estimates. GAAP is the standard accounting set. Non-GAAP leaves out items the company treats as outside the ordinary comparison. Data center revenue was about $7.3 billion, up almost 80% from a year earlier. Chief financial officer David Zinsner called it the strongest data center revenue growth in 15 years. Those figures are Intel's.

Fourth-quarter guidance is revenue of $15.0 billion to $16.0 billion, non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.25, and GAAP earnings per share of $0.10. Analysts had expected about $17.1 billion of revenue and $0.43 of earnings per share, according to LSEG, as CNBC reported. LSEG is the data firm that compiles the analyst average. Non-GAAP gross margin is guided to 38%. Gross margin is what is left of revenue after the cost of making the product, as a share of revenue. The guidance is Intel's. The comparison is LSEG's, as CNBC reported it.

Intel's reason is memory. AI data centers are soaking up memory chips, which pushes up the cost of a PC. Intel now expects 2026 PC unit sales to fall about 12%, with the second half down more than 20%, and 2027 PC unit sales to fall roughly 10%. It does not expect a sustained recovery until memory supply improves. Zinsner said, "We see the PC slowdown continuing at least through the first half of next year." Those lines are Intel's.

An incident at Fab 28, Intel's factory in Israel, cuts roughly $300 million from fourth-quarter revenue and 200 basis points from gross margin. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point, so 200 basis points is 2 percentage points. The hit is mostly 10-nanometer server products. CNBC reports the explosion killed two workers and seriously injured a third earlier this month. Zinsner put the total revenue hit at about $600 million over two quarters. Reuters reports Intel also said it does not expect positive cash flow this year. Cash flow is cash coming in minus cash going out. The factory figures are Intel's. The deaths and injuries are CNBC's report. The cash-flow line is Reuters's.

Chief executive Lip-Bu Tan said demand for Intel's CPUs "remains robust." A CPU is the main processor in a computer. He said the immediate priority is unlocking more supply for the Xeon family, Intel's server chips. Intel says server CPU units industry-wide should grow more than 30% in both 2026 and 2027. Those lines are Intel's.

The stock closed down nearly 29% on Friday, Oct. 30, about 28.6%. Yahoo Finance, using closing prices back to 1973, calls it the worst day since July 5, 1974, when the stock fell nearly 30%. The drop erased roughly $140 billion in market value. Even after the drop the stock is still up nearly 80% in 2026, and it has lost more than half its value since its June 22 record. Those lines are Yahoo Finance's. CNBC and Reuters reported the same Friday close.

The U.S. government is Intel's largest shareholder, after taking a 10% stake in August 2025. That holding fell by about $12 billion in value on Friday, as CNBC and Reuters reported. Nvidia's stake in Intel lost about $6 billion, CNBC reported. Reuters reports the cost of insuring Intel's debt against default hit an all-time high.

Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon called the outlook "(in a word) terrible" and cut his price target to $75 from $110. A price target is the price an analyst thinks the shares are worth. That line is his.

The picture is Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, in a dark suit and teal tie, standing beside U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in a wood-paneled office next to an American flag. The photograph is from Aug. 22, 2025, the week the government took its stake in Intel. The credit is the U.S. Department of Commerce, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In plain terms, Intel beat its third quarter, with revenue up 21% to $16.5 billion and data center sales up almost 80%. It then guided the fourth quarter to $15 billion to $16 billion, more than a billion dollars under the roughly $17.1 billion analysts expected, and the stock fell nearly 29% on Friday, its worst day since July 1974. Intel blames an AI-driven memory squeeze that is making PCs more expensive and cutting PC sales, plus a factory incident in Israel. The government, which owns 10%, lost about $12 billion of paper value in a day.