Intel is in a very good position long term as AI use shifts to more efficient consumption; the drop was partly justified as the stock exceeded fair value, and with sentiment rising slightly after a 5% fall today Intel looks near fair value. It gains momentum vs AMD but still lags Nvidia; foundry deals could add growth.

Now it's time for the " Cash-Tag" segment. Therefore, let's welcome our next guest , Megan de Branting, Vice President of Research at Lakefolio, to take an in-depth look at Intel, whose stock fell today.

Yes, when we look at Intel, as you mentioned, the stock has dropped by about 5% today. I think it's about 30% lower than its peak in September, but it's still about 150% higher than it was a year ago.

So, a big rise is now followed by a slight decline for Intel.

However, what we can look at are a few things. One of them is " sentiment," and we have a unique chart here today that allows us to look at investor sentiment specifically towards Intel and how it has changed with respect to the stock.

We saw that it started to reach its peak in 2025 and began to decline in June of this year.

You can see that morale on that yellow line there. For our part, we saw that it reached its lowest point in September and is now starting to rise slightly. So, for us, we started to see those lines converge when you look at the year-on-year change in the stock versus overall investor sentiment levels . We would love to see those lines meet.

We believe that some of this decline was somewhat justified, as the stock had slightly exceeded its fair value.

But in the long term, when we look to the future five years from now, we also see a major shift in how artificial intelligence is consumed . Therefore, we can look at what it used to take for artificial intelligence to build models, and compare it to what it takes now to use those models.

As consumers shift towards a more efficient usage pattern, this is to the advantage of Intel and the processors it provides. So, in the long run, Intel is in a very good position, but we have certainly seen some shocks to sentiment this year given that the stock has been trading at very high levels.

But when you look at it, is this based on customers saying they are buying something that contains an Intel chip, or is it more like, "Hey, are those stock traders talking about Intel stock?"

And they, as you know, are extremely excited despite the stock being down about 35% from those record levels we saw in July . Your data suggests that you have seen a decline in sentiment data, but how would you categorize the people posting about this in terms of social sentiment, i.e., the difference between a client and someone who might be trading the stock and is excited about it?

So, these might be people who are investors in Intel and are talking about how their products compare to those of a company like AMD. So, it's a bit murky, but it's certainly very predictive on our part when we look at this, and we like to see this a bit as it seems the bleeding is about to stop.

With Intel declining and those lines converging, we believe the stock is currently more in line with its fair value, you know, the more we look at these demand levels .

One thing that isn't there is that we can see people talking about and taking an interest in those chips , and we've recorded an increase of about 29% year-over-year to provide a peer reference point against companies like Nvidia or even AMD.

In fact, we see Intel gaining some momentum against AMD for the first time in our data, which is interesting, but we see that it is still lagging behind Nvidia, where demand has risen by about 81% year-on-year.

So, Intel has usually lagged behind these peers, so it's interesting to see it start to gain some momentum here, and also to see it start to gain higher sentiment levels as that stock declines.

The biggest thing we see investors talking about is AI funding in general, and how that will be done when you look at these huge capital expenditure bills, and how these companies will pay for it, and obviously this is affecting Intel.

We see some concerns about continued inflation, and what interest rate increases might mean. So, some of these things are things that investors worry about a little. But overall, I think one of the biggest drivers of positive sentiment is any potential upgrades to the foundry plants.

We have seen a report from KeyBank, which I believe has not been confirmed, about potential deals in the works for Intel's foundry arm, so I think this will be very important to monitor going forward, and could be another potential growth catalyst for Intel.

Yes, Megan, I think their share of the central processing unit (CPU) market has dropped below 70% for the first time.

Therefore, I believe this inherently represents a case of "a rising tide lifting all boats". As you mentioned, AMD is certainly a major player here and may have captured the largest market share from Intel, and now Nvidia is starting to enter, but Intel is still a major player in the field of central processing units.

So, when you start to see a shift like this on the graph, and when you think about the long term, these are still some of the long-term positives for Intel.