What Just Happened To Intel Stock?
For questions about this article or underlying research, email help@trefis.com.
Intel (INTC) stock fell 10.3% on Thursday, November 5, 2026, compared with a 4.4% decline in the S&P 500. The company issued no announcements, earnings reports or filings that day or the day before. The drop occurred on a day of heavy selling in AI stocks, when the Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5%. What ties Intel to that sell-off?
How Is Intel Tied To AI Demand?
Intel connects to AI through its data center business, the segment that led the company’s revenue growth in the third quarter. Management said on its October 29 call that Intel is growing supply to capture strong demand for AI compute, and that demand for its data center products still exceeds what it can supply.
Data center revenue reached $7.3 billion in the quarter, climbing nearly 80% from a year earlier. The PC business moved in the opposite direction. Revenue from client chips for PCs fell 5%, and management said memory shortages and limited IT budgets were weighing on PC demand. Management expects industry server CPU units to grow more than 30% in both 2026 and 2027.
How Did Other Chipmakers Do On Thursday?
Fellow chipmakers also lost ground. AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Micron, the five chipmakers we compare Intel with, all dropped during the same session. Those declines ranged from 9.3% at Nvidia to 17.5% at Micron, while the SPDR technology sector fund, XLK, fell 8.0%.
Intel moved in tandem with its group. The stock recorded a fall larger than the sector fund’s and more than twice the S&P 500’s, though the decline remained smaller than AMD’s 17.3% drop and Micron’s.
When a whole sector sells off, the question isn’t which way it breaks. It’s how to be fine either way.
Intel Stock Has Halved In A Month
Before Thursday, Intel had seen three trading sessions in the past year with a fall at least as large as Thursday’s. The most recent occurred on October 30, the day after its third-quarter call, when the stock fell 28.6%. On that call, management guided fourth-quarter revenue to $15 billion to $16 billion, below the third quarter’s $16.5 billion, and expected PC chip revenue to fall more than 20% from the third quarter.
Intel has lost 53.8% since October 7, compared with a 5.7% fall in the S&P 500. Thursday’s close of $52.25 sat far below the stock’s 52-week closing high of $140.94, set on June 22. Over twelve months, Intel is still up 41.1%, against 9.9% for the S&P 500. Its lowest close in that year was $33.62, on November 20, 2025.
Shares trade at 4.6 times sales, against 3.2 for the S&P 500. Intel is expected to report its fourth-quarter 2026 results in January 2027. Heading into that report, data center revenue, which management guided to grow by a mid-teens percentage from the third quarter, is the measure to watch.
Still Holding Intel After The Drop?
Selling a fallen stock can still bring a tax bill if you bought long ago, and holding keeps the risk. A free 30-minute strategy review with our partner advisory firm covers a floor under a large position and a lower-tax unwind.
Spot an error or want more like this? Tell us in 10 seconds.