Intel’s stock dropped around 30% overnight, shaving some $39 billion from the company’s market capitalization since rumors of a pending layoff first emerged. The devastating results come after the chip giant reported a loss for the second quarter, complained about yield issues with the Meteor Lake CPU, provided a modest business outlook for the next few quarters, and announced plans to lay off 15,000 people worldwide.
When the NYSE closed on July 31, Intel’s market capitalization was $130.86 billion. Then, a report about Intel’s massive layoffs was published, and the company’s market capitalization dropped sharply to $123.96 billion on August 1. Following Intel’s financial report yesterday, the company’s capitalization dropped to $91.86 billion. Essentially, Intel has lost half of its capitalization since January. As of now, Intel’s market value is a fraction of Nvidia’s worth and less than half of AMD’s.
As Intel’s actions look rather desperate, analysts believe that Intel’s challenges are existential. “Intel’s issues are now approaching the existential,” Stacy Rasgon, an analyst with Bernstein, told Reuters.
It’s because the stock market is closer to a casino than a place where fair valuations of businesses are made.
Also, market cap is just the latest trade price times the total number of shares. It doesn’t mean that anyone is willing to buy or sell the entire business for that amount, just that some shares were traded at a price that extrapolates to that.
It’s kinda like getting an A on your first assignment in grade 1 and assuming that means you’re a straight A student and will maintain that until you finish your doctorate. Or getting an F and assuming you might as well just drop out.
The closest thing to reality market cap really says is that investors who are making current trades believe that AMD will surpass Intel at some point. Or that they aren’t comparing either company directly to the other and just go by feeling plus the price history. “I feel more confident in AMD today, therefore the price should be higher than it was yesterday. I feel less confident in Intel today, therefore the price should be lower than it was yesterday.” It doesn’t even really matter if yesterday’s price was accurate, it’s all just relative to itself and fed by fear and greed.
Preach. I’m just worried for when nvidia pops. The grumblings about the machine learning fad are starting to happen but that’s a company that is incredibly likely to lose 80% of revenue in 5 years once businesses see how the huge investments flop.
There’s some strange belief that chat bots being semi-coherent is going to turn into true AI and take over all the white collar jobs. The more popular chatbots become the poorer the data quality will be. It’s inevitable that all the bots posting on all the social media sites will poison the datasets especially as more and more turn to chatbots to generate content.
Peoples imaginations are running wild. I think if 2% of the use cases pan out it will be a wild success but ML is not new and entire divisions have been scrapped for failing to turn a profit (looking at Alexa, for sure.) When the pop happens the drop will be so significant the ripples may cause a recession all by itself.