Why Intel stock price down today? How the AI memory crunch and weak PC demand hit its forecast, and could the selloff deepen?

Synopsis

Intel (INTC) Stock Crash: Intel shares fell about 29 per cent on Friday after a weak December quarter forecast. Falling PC demand and costlier memory chips are hurting the company, and the selloff has spread to other chip and server stocks.

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Intel shares (NASDAQ: INTC) fell about 29 per cent on Friday, October 30, one of the steepest single-day drops in the company’s history. The fall is set to wipe out roughly $137 billion to $140 billion of its market value, depending on the report. It came a day after Intel gave a revenue forecast that was well below what Wall Street expected.

Why Intel stock is falling today

On Thursday, Intel said its revenue for the December quarter would be between $15 billion and $16 billion. Analysts had expected around $17 billion, and some estimates were above $18 billion.

The profit outlook was weaker too. Intel expects adjusted earnings of 25 cents a share, against the 43 cents analysts were looking for. Finance chief David Zinsner also said the company does not expect positive cash flow this year.

Intel blamed the weak PC market. Bloomberg reported that supply problems with its data centre chips also hurt the outlook. Corporate IT teams have less money to spend on laptops, which adds to the pressure.

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How costlier memory chips are hurting PC demand

Memory makers are shifting production towards high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI systems. This has pushed up the price of regular memory, which makes PCs more expensive. Buyers were already cautious, so demand has weakened further.

This matters because PC chips made up about half of Intel’s third-quarter revenue. The company expects PC chip sales to fall more than 20 per cent this quarter compared with the previous one. They had already dropped 5 per cent in the September quarter.

Brian Mulberry of Zacks Investment Management said Intel needs to increase supply of its highly profitable Xeon server chips to offset the PC weakness. He added that lower sales volumes, higher manufacturing costs and an unfavourable product mix could keep earnings under pressure in the near term.

AMD, Nvidia and other chip stocks also fall

The selloff did not stop at Intel. According to MarketWatch, AMD fell 9.39 per cent and Nvidia fell 3.43 per cent. Reuters reported that Arm, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Micron also fell between 2 and 10 per cent. Server makers Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Super Micro Computer dropped 6 to 10 per cent.

The impact was visible in Europe as well. The STOXX Europe 600 Technology Index fell 2 per cent, with ASML down 4.6 per cent. US-listed shares of TSMC slipped 3.3 per cent.

Matt Britzman of Hargreaves Lansdown said investors are currently selling first and asking questions later. In his view, Intel’s warning gave them an easy reason to book profits across the sector.

The fall also adds to the challenge for CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Intel is trying to turn the company around while spending heavily on AI and manufacturing, and a long PC slump is making that harder.

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