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Intel’s woes wipe out $1 trillion of semiconductor market cap in one day — PC market bloodbath leaves few chip stocks unscathed $1 trillion in semiconductor market capitalization wiped out. Intel's shares plunged 30% on Friday, wiping out nearly $150 billion in market capitalization in a single day, the largest single-day loss in the company's history. The decline followed a disappointing financial outlook, largely driven by an anticipated drop of more than 20% in sales at Intel's client computing group (CCPG), the company's main cash cow. The declines quickly spread across the semiconductor industry. Although losses elsewhere were nowhere near as severe as Intel's, approximately $1 trillion in semiconductor market capitalization was wiped out on Friday, according to intraday estimates by Benzinga. Fire sale The PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index (SOX), which tracks the stock performance of 30 major semiconductor companies, is one of the key indicators of the industry's financial health. On Friday, the index plunged 9.14%, or 1,052.82 points, to 10,465.38 points as of 2:31 PM ET, as Intel's disappointing outlook triggered a massive selloff across the semiconductor industry. Intel was by far the biggest loser, as other chip-related stocks, while Arm (-12.68%), AMD (-12.48%), Qualcomm (-12.14%), Applied Materials (-8.73%), ASML (-8.13%), Lam Research (-8%), Micron (-7.28%), and Broadcom (-7.1%) suffered considerably less. Then again, while Nvidia lost 5.66% of its market cap, this translates to around $270 billion, which is a massive amount of money. Paradoxically, Nvidia lost more market capitalization in absolute dollar terms than Intel. In an unexpected turn of events, the downturn extended to server manufacturers and cloud giants too, as Dell (-12.67%), HPE (-8.10%), Supermicro (-6.96%), and Oracle (-6.88%) lost nearly 7% to 13% of their value. Reuters noted that investors increasingly question the scale of capital investments required to expand AI infrastructure as well as the sustainability of that spending. Gloomy outlook Intel’s client computing and physical AI group (CCPG) generated $8.1 billion in revenue during Q3 2026, down 5% year-over-year and 9% sequentially. Weaker demand and increased competition reduced client processor shipments by 14% year-over-year, which was partially offset by a 9% increase in average selling prices. CCPG accounted for nearly half of Intel's revenue of around $16.5 billion and the company's main source of cash. As strong demand for server processors only partially offsets declining client sales, Intel guided its Q4 revenue to be between $15 billion and $16 billion. Intel expects the client market to deteriorate further in Q4 2026 and into 2027 as elevated memory prices and shortages of other components impact PC prices and demand. In general, Intel expects the client PC market to decline 10% in 2027 compared to 2026, which will inevitably have an effect on CCPG performance. While Intel expects its data center business to continue growing in 2027, industry-wide supply constraints will limit its ability to fully capitalize on demand. 2026 has been a mixed bag for Intel so far. On the one hand, the company achieved its highest market capitalization ever — $673.43 billion in mid-June — on growing sales of data center CPUs, strong sales of client products, and a return to profitability (if the $12.5 billion non-cash accounting charge associated with shares issued to the U.S. government is excluded). On the other hand, the company's capitalization has dropped by nearly 50% to $338.91 billion since mid-June (with $148.68 billion in just one day), as investors began to realize that the performance of Intel's CCPG heavily depends on memory prices, as customers and businesses tend not to like overpriced systems. Yet on the other hand, now that Intel sells fewer client processors, it can sell more expensive data center CPUs. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. What about Apple? Surprisingly, Apple (-1.66%), which only sells client products, was nearly unaffected by the performance of Intel's client computing group, as investors probably believe that the world's largest supplier of consumer electronics is more immune to memory prices than Intel. Ironically, if we count the A-series SoCs used in iPhones (which tend to outperform mainstream laptop CPUs), Apple sells substantially more processors than Intel, making Apple by far the world's largest supplier of microprocessors. Despite this, Apple's shares were largely unaffected by the semiconductor selloff. There are several reasons for this distinction. Firstly, Apple's business model is fundamentally different. Intel sells processors to PC manufacturers, whereas Apple designs its own processors and sells them as part of finished products. Consequently, Apple captures revenue from the entire device rather than just the processor. Secondly, the two companies face different demand dynamics. Intel depends heavily on the PC market, while Apple's iPhone business follows the smartphone replacement cycle. Rising memory prices could affect both, but not necessarily to the same extent and at the same time. There is an additional irony: Apple is also a major customer of TSMC, so its processor supply chain overlaps with those of AMD, Intel, and other semiconductor companies whose shares declined sharply. While we should not directly compare Apple and Intel, the comparison illustrates that investors were not necessarily abandoning companies that design or use semiconductors, but were rather concerned about the profitability and growth prospects of these high-tech companies. And if we take a look at the situation from this point of view, the whole thing will start looking completely different. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends. - Lieutenant Barclay I hope it gets worse. I want the greedy investors jumping out of high-rise windows.Reply - hotaru251 this is what happens when you have overinflated valuations.... is it gonna pop? not soon but man the wait is killing me as I want market to realize how bad over inflating is for even traders long term. Reply - derekullo Lieutenant Barclay said:I hope it gets worse. I want the greedy investors jumping out of high-rise windows.Down markets are actually the best times for investors for deploying saved funds. Nobody wants to buy a stock or etf with a historically high P/E ratio. What you are saying in essence is you want the poor and middle class to struggle even more while the investors dial back their vacation from Hawaii to Key West ... I type this on a vacation in Key West unaware that the market would fall during my vacation lol. Reply - Jeremy Kaplan Lieutenant Barclay said:I hope it gets worse. I want the greedy investors jumping out of high-rise windows.Well that's a little extreme. But yeesh, it really seems clear that there's an AI fueled bubble. I just hope it doesn't crush my 401k Reply - JamesJones44 People got over exuberant about what Intel was going to be able to do in the GenAI processor/SoC space. The quarter and guide themselves were actually not bad, but the world of GenAI hopes and dreams it wasn't enough to satisfy them. AMD is in a similar boat, the whisper numbers out there have them near 20 billion in revenue for this quarter. Seems extremely unlikely to me as it would be 53% more than the guide from AMD, but when the bubble is inflating, people get crazy ideas in their head. Reply - Kindaian Jeremy Kaplan said:Well that's a little extreme. But yeesh, it really seems clear that there's an AI fueled bubble. I just hope it doesn't crush my 401kPension funds have limits on the amount they invest, are forced to diversify, and normally edge the bets (aka they receive less, but risk less as well). So long term, i agree, hope it will not be too bad for the pension funds. Reply - bit_user derekullo said:Down markets are actually the best times for investors for deploying saved funds. Nobody wants to buy a stock or etf with a historically high P/E ratio.This. There's usually a bounce after such a steep drop. However, there might be further drops, if more bad news follows. I'm not sure I'd stick a toe in, just yet. I certainly wouldn't go all-in, at this point. Reply - thestryker I'd say google acknowledging ai was impacting their ad revenue is what started this slide. It's a tacit acknowledgement that there isn't a business model for the ai capital expenditure which makes up for how it's undermining existing business.Reply - derekullo bit_user said:This. There's usually a bounce after such a steep drop. However, there might be further drops, if more bad news follows. I'm not sure I'd dip a toe in, just yet. I certainly wouldn't go all-in, at this point.I bought a few shares of TECL just in case this was a temporary dip. I really like to buy some shares under $100 each. Reply
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