"Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert Palmer, former DEC CEO)
Stock price has tripled since last August. Hopefully, Intel is really back. They do need a couple of Fab customers.
I've always felt like Pat was a scapegoat who was chosen to clean up the mess when the whole place was already up in smoke and the smell was only starting to leak out. I liked his strategy, was disappointed to see him booted out.
Let's be fair to Bob, he has the vision, but dont know how to execute it because he lacks the technical knowledge.
He was also the one who finally settled the argument I had for 5 years, if Intel were to made 250M Modem for Apple, where is the additional Capex for capacity expansion on their Fabs. The answer, only to be told by Bob in a 2020 interview was they never really planned for it.
That’s just a statement of fact. I offered no other analysis.
Let's face it. Everything he cut, and products / department he sold were what he wanted to do on day one. He had to force his hand, make the stock price worst and ultimately force the board to allow him to do it.
You could argue he laid all the foundation for today's Intel to thrive.
Yes, I am pointing the fingers at the board. Although words on the street was the board also have their hands tied as they were also beholden to large institutional investors. It is all a Game of Cards.
What exactly has Intel done that’s dramatically different than Pat’s vision that you feel is increasing share price?
Or is it just that they sold their soul to Trump combined with Pat’s choices finally bearing fruit?
Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel.
* Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. When he was fired in 2024, Intel had $54 billion in revenue and 124k employees. He also didn't cut dividend until 2024. He nearly put Intel into the grave in 3 years.
* Under Pat, Intel's roadmap was a mess. When you look at AMD's roadmap, it made a ton of sense, predictable, and there are rarely any delays or cancellations. When you looked at an Intel roadmap, expect 30% of them cancelled, 50% delayed by 1-2 quarters, and 30% switched to a different node tech.
* IFS strategy under Pat amounted to nothing. Fab cancellations or on hold. Cancelling 20A altogether. Not being able to woo any notable customers. Not hiring the right people for external customers. There were reports that he didn't know how to run an external fab, which is why the board decided to hire Lip Bu Tan who came from Cadence.
* He missed on AI boom, crypto boom, said AMD was in rear view mirror, politicized TSMC in order to win government grants while still still using TSMC nodes themself.
That's nonsense. Intel's problems were caused by falling behind TSMC, which was not the fault of Pat Gelsinger. Quite the contrary, he did a lot to turn things around, but this takes time, a lot more than three years.
Under Pat, Intel overestimated the covid boom, which nearly put them into bankruptcy. They hired many more employees while their revenue tanked. He went on an IFS spending spree while he lacked execution on actually winning external customers. He didn't stop dividends until 2024 which tells me he lacked awareness of where Intel was as late as 2024.
LBT was hired because he could actually see Intel as what it is today, instead of the Intel dominance that Pat thought he was still operating in.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/revenue
Of course that is a pipe dream, so it should provide the highest value for the lowest cost.
For those who want to argue it should be a balance: consider the opposite position. A producer should provide no value at infinite cost. In this case, everything withers. If party A and party B need each other's products to survive, they can do that when the value is infinite and the cost is zero, but not when the value is zero and the cost is infinite.
The last few decades have shown that giving the finger to the customer and going all in on shareholdermaxxing has nothing but terrible effects and is like sticking a spanner into the wheel of capitalism.
“We have all this money but we have no long term vision for how to grow the company. We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing prop up our share price instead”.
On a broader societal basis, it's often better for companies to stay in their lane, return profits to shareholders, and let shareholders invest in new companies with more growth potential.
He was not allowed to cut dividend until 2024. Cutting dividend was the first thing he wanted before he even became CEO. The board said no.
Edit: Would have had ~$20B savings, $10B from early sell off, started the work 3 years earlier. In hindsight the best was probably hire someone to do the dirty work before Pat took over. But again, the board had no idea what they were doing. Or they have their hands tied as well ( Which I dont buy into it much. )
>Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. >Under Pat, Intel's roadmap was a mess. When you look at AMD's roadmap, it made a ton of sense, predictable, and there are rarely any delays or cancellations. When you looked at an Intel roadmap, expect 30% of them cancelled, 50% delayed by 1-2 quarters, and 30% switched to a different node tech.
He become CEO in 2021 Feb. He was also the one who sorted out Intel's roadmap from a mess to something comprehensible.
>IFS strategy under Pat amounted to nothing
No person on planet earth could have executed IFS in under 3 years. Especially with little to no cashflow. It was always a long term goal. That is why he has to play the government subsidy card, when he was, again not allow to cut dividend. Edit: And I might just add, getting Intel's IFS to have a separate balance sheet took longer than expected precisely because it would expose certain numbers that could affect stock price. cough Guess who were against it.
>He missed on AI boom, crypto boom
Considering how long the cycle of chip works. I am not sure how he missed any of it.
soon or later they were gonna turn things around with military precision specially with DOD, Intelligence folks giving advice.