Intel, long written off, is back. The company, which employs 4,900 people in Ireland, has been one of 2026’s story stocks, soaring 65 per cent.
Shares have more than tripled since August, with much of those gains coming during a recent record-breaking spell.
A gain of 56 per cent in just nine trading days marks the best run since at least 1984, notes Bespoke Investment. Shares are more than 75 per cent above their 200-day average, a level seen only a handful of times in the stock’s 55-year history.
It’s quite the turnaround, given Intel traded 50 per cent below its 200-day average less than two years ago, one of its deepest discounts in history.
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Some readers may think the stock was dirt cheap then and that they should have loaded up. Intel traded below the value of its assets near the bottom, a point widely noted at the time.
However, hindsight is easy; investing is anything but. Even after August 2024’s share price collapse, the stock went nowhere for a year.
Cheap for a reason? Many analysts thought so. Being cheap is not enough; a turnaround needs a catalyst, which arrived with Intel’s Irish Fab 34 buyback and new partnerships including Elon Musk’s Terafab project and Alphabet’s commitment to future Xeon processors.
Today, Intel is far from cheap. While its $340 billion (€288 billion) market capitalisation remains below 2000’s peak, Intel trades on 125 times forecast earnings – well above dotcom-era levels.
Price-earnings ratios can be unreliable during earnings turnarounds, and Intel’s price-sales ratio of 5.5 looks more reasonable, though still up sharply from 1.8 a year ago.
For now, investors are no longer debating whether Intel is cheap, but how far the re-rating can run.
