Intel More Than Quadrupled In A Year, So Why Has It Cooled

The company spent the past year going from survival questions to one of the market’s biggest gainers, which makes its retreat from the high the more interesting story.

What Changed To Send Intel (INTC) Up More Than Fourfold?

Over the past year, Intel stock more than quadrupled, climbing about 308%, while the broader market managed nearly 18%. The move was not built on hope. By the company’s own account, the conversation flipped from whether Intel could survive to how fast it can add capacity to keep up with demand. Revenue over the last twelve months reached about $57 billion and grew 7.5%, an acceleration from a three-year average near 2%. The businesses tied to AI now make up about 60% of revenue and grew 40% year over year, and management says the CPU is reclaiming ground inside AI systems, with the ratio of processors to accelerators shifting from one-in-eight toward one-in-four.

Is This Just The AI Chip Trade Lifting Everything?

Only partly. AMD rode the same wave and roughly tripled, up about 222%, but Nvidia gained only about 19% and Qualcomm about 7% over the same stretch, a fraction of that. The gains concentrated in the two biggest movers, and Intel outran even AMD. What set it apart was progress in its own factories: management says its 18A manufacturing process is yielding ahead of internal plans, and the company has pointed to multiyear deals with customers such as Google, a slot for its Xeon server chips inside Nvidia’s flagship AI systems, and a headline tie-up with Elon Musk’s ventures.

So Where Are The Profits Hiding?

This is the catch the rally has begun to price. Intel still loses money at the bottom line, with a net margin over the last twelve months of about negative 20%, worse than its own three-year average of negative 13% and far below the 7.4% it earned at its recent peak. The profit engine everyone is counting on is also the one bleeding cash, as Intel Foundry lost $2.4 billion in a single quarter, Q1 2026, while its new 18A node ramps up. Even gross margin, running at 41% in that quarter, had been guided down to 39% for Q2 2026, a quarter that has since closed with results still pending, and management flagged the costly 18A ramp and rising memory and input costs. That is why the stock has given back more than a third from its 52-week high: investors believe the demand and are now waiting on the profit.

What Still Has To Show Up For The Climb To Hold?

The demand question looks settled, and Intel won it. What is unsettled is timing, and the retreat from the high is the market pricing the gap between a revenue line that is accelerating and a margin line that is still underwater. If you own the stock, or you are tempted by it after the pullback, the number to watch is not the order book but the bottom line: whether the net margin climbs back toward that 7.4% peak as the 18A ramp matures. That is the kind of improving-trajectory signal you can follow on our guidance momentum screen, which is where a story like this one gets settled next.

Even A Turnaround This Big Can Round-Trip Your Gains

Intel may well earn its way into the profits the market is now demanding. But the past year is its own warning: a stock can more than quadruple and still hand back a third of the climb while you hold it, on little more than a softer margin guide. A single name asks you to be right about both the story and the timing. A rules-based portfolio is built to compound through swings like that, spreading the timing risk that one stock concentrates in a single line. That thinking sits behind our High Quality portfolio. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000.