$10,000 of Intel bought 25 years ago is worth $10,000 today.
- Thread starter soAsian
- Start date
hist78
Well-known member
When adjusted for inflation, the figure isn’t very pretty. $10,000 in September 2000 has the same purchasing power as about $18,651 in August 2025.
CPI Inflation Calculator
www.bls.gov
hist78
Well-known member
From 2000 to Q1 2021, Intel spent billions each year on stock repurchase programs to boost its share price, totaling $133.86 billion over that period. However, the actual stock performance turned out to be very poor for long term Intel investors.
siliconbruh999
Well-known member
Suprise Pikachu face when You do more Stock Buy back than to maintain your competitive edge.
MKWVentures
Moderator
the stock was a good investment until Q1 2021. Then what happened??? Oh ya, now I remember.
LBT will fix the 4 year nightmare by 2027
siliconbruh999
Well-known member
The Stock was not a good investment period during Intel's lazy days
During that time, semi was not in focus.
siliconbruh999
Well-known member
Well the only reason semi was in focus is due to Covid.
Did they really continue buying back their own shares for such a long period of time?
hist78
Well-known member
Yes, from 2000 to Q1 2021, Intel spent billions each year on share buybacks, totaling $133.86 billion.
After Q1 2021, Intel stopped repurchasing shares because it ran out of cash.
Exactly the stuff one would expect from WallStreetBets. Microsoft was a dead investment for ~16 years if you choose the DOT com bubble peak as your starting point to invest $10,000. Once this AI infrastructure buildout is over, we may find Nvidia chart looking like this for 15+ years after 20 years.
In 2022-2023 time frame. Meta & Amazon stock were depressed a lot because those firms were spending unusually too much capex (Meta was investing in building out their AI recommendation system to circumvent Apple privacy measures - though average people thought they were spending too much on stupid thing like Metaverse - people who don't read earnings report or 10K or 10Q & Amazon was building lot of warehouses & datacenters). So Free Cash flow (FCF charts below) of these firms were depressed unusually to low values & stocks sold off. Analysts downgraded the stocks, said business are getting non profitable blah blah. People who didn't listen to these analysts bought this opportunity and made a ton of money. People who understood Capex spent today = future growth. The analysts however sounded very Intelligent when these stocks sold off though
.Intel 3 looking to be paying off already with DC segment margins improving as Granite Rapids & Sierra Forrest ramping. Industry followers are claiming "Xeon 6 is the best Xeon out of Intel in the last 10 years". 5N4Y investments will payoff starting 2026 when Panther Lake comes out. Intel has been saying that & still does. Foundry efforts will payoff in 5+ years (an optimistic take would be say even before that).
Could he do that without the increased investments during those "4 year nightmare"? imo, only in a couple of scenario the last 4 years of Intel (that was stuck in 10nm) would have turned out better starting in 2021. One is Intel decides to spin off foundry & go entirely fabless relying mostly on TSMC in 2021. In 2021, an Intel CEO looks at all the supply chain chaos during COVID and decides relying more on TSMC in Taiwan is the good approach,
. The second one is an Intel CEO who looks at the <$10B TAM of AI compute in 2021 and decides to pivot from CPUs to GPUs in 2021 (& outgun Nvidia who has been doing this for a decade even at that point).
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Sorry this is not true. Intel intentionally stopped buybacks to invest more into their own business. This was a conscious decision when their revenues were peak in 2021.
BruceA
Well-known member
Just imagine what you could have done with 10K in NVDA, TSLA, AMD or just in the QQQ
siliconbruh999
Well-known member
If i knew i would not be here discussing stuff i would be enjoying my retirementJust imagine what you could have done with 10K in NVDA, TSLA, AMD or just in the QQQ
MKWVentures
Moderator
Just look at Intel investment from Feb 2021 on compared to competition. Intel went down 50% everyone else skyrocketed. The stocked dropped due to foundry performance (two major drops). Everyone invested in AI and Pat invested in IFS and no external customers taped out a product.Could he do that without the increased investments during those "4 year nightmare"? imo, only in a couple of scenario the last 4 years of Intel (that was stuck in 10nm) would have turned out better starting in 2021. One is Intel decides to spin off foundry & go entirely fabless relying mostly on TSMC in 2021. In 2021, an Intel CEO looks at all the supply chain chaos during COVID and decides relying more on TSMC in Taiwan is the good approach,
Pat Invested in Foundry. Pat sold off rights to Fab 34 and Fab 52 to investment firms who have very powerful terms. If Pat invested in DC GPUs, it appears that may be wasted. There are no significant customer for Intel DC GPUs (Intel is not a top 3 provider)
If IFS is paying off, then we will see big shift in P&L in 2026. Lets see what happens. There could be a 18A accounting issue that has come up based on the yields. The wafer price is supposed to be the same at TSMC N2 (per Intel financial rules) but the yields are much lower so the question is whether Product groups will take the hi ot or whether IFS will.
LBT is pretty much doing the opposite of Pat across the board so lets see how things go. 2025 is really interesting and we haven't even gotten to the roadmap changes and IFS changes
We will know soon enough.
siliconbruh999
Well-known member
You mean Intel advanced accounting rules where the wafer price will include foundry margins as well?
Intel went down 50% because they were losing market share to AMD because AMD was using superior node process from TSMC - Pat answered that with 5N4Y and it is paying off now.
Lets say no Pat or no 5N4Y in 2021, Intel outsources entire PC & DC CPU line up to TSMC, what then? Would the Post Covid PC downturn or the AI disruption in DC not have happened then? Intel design team suddenly excels in using TSMC nodes and outcompetes AMD products?
Benefit in Intel P&L loss statement would have been reduction in Opex if they fired bunch of their engineers (no R&D & no new capex depreciation), but their COGS will increase considerably as they are paying >50% gross profit to TSMC. Then there is the question of what happens to the existing fabs, still needs pay the bills for the upkeep or write down 10s of billions in assets. Intel's cash flow statement & balance sheet would have looked better. Intel stock may not have sold off this bad that I agree 100% but the downward revenue pressures of the last 4 years don't just vanish just because Intel becomes fabless.
Pat invested both in 5N4Y & Foundry, He also shored up the product roadmaps too. Both are paying off now or will pay off. I personally don't like the SCIP agreements myself but its either that or accumulate more debt to execute the strategy to build & equip Arizona Fabs. Also that SCIP fiasco blame should also be shared with the CFO (the Smart Capital initiative is Dave's brain child) & BoD which approved that as well (LBT was part of that too). I never said Pat invested in GPUs. He definitely missed AI. Even if he invested in it, I personally don't think Intel would have won anything in AI.
Sure we will see how that goes. Intel paid north of $10B to TSMC in 2024 for all the wafer outsourcing to TSMC. >50% of that is Gross profit for TSMC. So there has to be some savings for Intel as a whole. Where it lands on the P&L, I am not sure (my bet is mostly foundry side).
On the foundry capex deployment side, sure I 100% agree. On raising capital side, its mixed bag for me. Pat sold future profits to Private Equity for cash, LBT is selling future profit to USG, Softbank & Nvidia for cash so far (both dilutes earnings\free cashflow to common shareholders). But there is no other way out of this, so that doesn't bother me as shareholder.
On the product side, the next 2 years of products are all Pat's. My only fear is LBT's recent hack & slash of Intel's headcount does not affect the dev/launch of these products. Any changes to the roadmap by LBT will take couple of years to affect actual product except in AI. We know the SMT is coming back to Coral Rapids DC CPUs which LBT personally changed per him.
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