Intel Plunges 30% Intraday, Erasing $146 Billion as Global Chip Stocks Sell Off

Intel (INTC-US) tumbled 30% intraday Friday, on pace for its largest single-day decline on record, wiping out more than $146 billion in market value and triggering a global semiconductor selloff. The company guided quarterly revenue more than $1 billion below consensus and warned it will not achieve positive cash flow this year, Reuters reported. Credit markets flashed warnings: Intel's five-year credit default swap spread widened 17.5 basis points to 124.75 basis points, a record high and potentially the largest single-day move since October 2022. The U.S. government, which took a 10% stake in Intel last August to become its largest shareholder, faces a roughly $12 billion decline in the holding's value. AMD (AMD-US), Arm (ARM-US), Qualcomm (QCOM-US), Nvidia (NVDA-US), Broadcom (AVGO-US) and Micron (MU-US) fell 4% to 12%. ASML (ASML-US) dropped more than 6% in Europe; TSMC (2330-TW) fell nearly 2% in Taipei. Dell (DELL-US), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE-US) and Supermicro (SMCI-US) lost 6% to 11%. Seaport Research Partners analyst Jay Goldberg said the selloff reflects lost confidence in management, criticizing Intel for overproducing consumer chips into the worst PC market in 15 years while undersupplying AI server chips. Intel held $21.84 billion in cash as of the end of September against $46.32 billion in long-term debt.