Intel Q1 2026 Earnings
29x EPS beat, 18A in high-volume manufacturing, Data Center AI at $5.1B. The turnaround is real — tonight's 20% gap isn't the entry.
Q1 2026 Actuals
- Revenue: $13.58B vs $12.42B expected — +9% beat
- Adj EPS: $0.29 vs $0.01 expected — 29x beat
- GAAP EPS: -$0.73 — heavy restructuring charges still in the model
- Data Center & AI: $5.1B, +22% YoY
- Client Computing (PCs): $7.7B vs $7.1B expected
- 6th consecutive quarter beating all three guided metrics
Q2 2026 Guidance
- Revenue: $13.8B–$14.8B vs $13.07B expected
- Adj EPS: $0.20 vs $0.09 expected
- Stock: +20% after hours
The Take
The CPU-as-AI-infrastructure narrative is legitimate. Data center CPU demand is real — not everything runs on GPUs, and Intel is actually winning incremental inference workload. The "CPU is the foundation of the AI era" line from Lip-Bu Tan isn't just marketing.
The 18A node being in high-volume manufacturing with Panther Lake shipping is the most important thing happening at Intel right now. Qualcomm and Microsoft as foundry customers means external validation from companies that don't take on process risk lightly. Tan also flattened a bureaucratic org structure that was choking execution. Six consecutive beats isn't an accident — this is a different company than 2023 Intel.
The Tension
The foundry segment is still hemorrhaging. Q4 2025 showed foundry revenue of $4.5B with operating losses of ~$2.5B — that's -50%+ operating margins. Those losses don't disappear even when CPUs do well. The GAAP loss of -$0.73 this quarter vs adj +$0.29 tells you there's significant restructuring and D&A being stripped out of the "clean" number. The actual cash generation story is still fragile.
Tan himself calls 2026 an "execution year" and says the inflection is 2027. That's honest — and it also means you're paying for a story that's 12–18 months from being proven.
Trade Read
After a 20% AH gap this is not an entry. This is now a momentum/narrative stock. If you want exposure, you wait for the gap to partially fill — probably somewhere in the $50s depending on where it opens. A LEAP on INTC with a 2027 expiry has asymmetric logic (turnaround proven = big upside), but buying into a 20% gap is a terrible R/R. Let it settle, watch the first pullback after the initial squeeze, then evaluate.
The turnaround is real. The entry isn't tonight.