Intel Stuns Wall Street With Earnings Beat And HUGE $32B Lawsuit Win… All in Under 24 Hours

If you had “Intel hitting back to back grandslams” this week… you’re either a prophet or still bag-holding INTC from the Bush administration. Heading into the earnings call, things were looking rough. Intel's stock was getting yeeted pretty hard as investors feared earnings would be a disaster “of the likes we’ve never seen.” Honestly? Hard to blame them.

This is a company that cratered 60% just last year, coughed up an $18.8 billion loss (its worst annual showing since 1986) and, just to spice things up, was still dragging around a $32 billion shareholder lawsuit. The suit claimed Intel misled investors by downplaying how deep its foundry business was bleeding out behind the scenes. All of that on top of getting dunked on by AMD and Nvidia, who’ve been eating Intel’s lunch for years… sometimes on Intel’s own trays. So naturally, expectations were in the gutter. And that’s when Intel did something nobody expected… They actually delivered.

Let’s start with the fun part. Intel actually beat Wall Street’s Q2 revenue expectations, pulling in $12.86 billion versus the $11.92 billion forecast. That’s not nothing… especially in a quarter where they reported a $0.10 adjusted EPS loss, thanks to an $800 million impairment charge from “excess tools with no identified re-use.” The real translation? They went on a capex bender, bought a bunch of fancy chip-making toys, and now half of it’s sitting unused… like a closet full of unopened fitness equipment after New Year’s.

(Source: CNBC)

But the real Street-pleaser was that they’re cutting 15% of their workforce, trimming down to around 75,000 employees by year-end. CEO Lip-Bu Tan made it clear: no more blank checks. Meaning: no more pouring money into half-baked projects or bougie factories unless they’re actually going to, you know, turn a profit. He even killed off fabs in Germany and Poland and put the brakes on that overhyped new Ohio facility unless someone (looking at you, Microsoft) ponies up with a big commitment. This comes after years of Intel “investing too much, too soon… without adequate demand,” as Tan put it. (A surprisingly polite way of saying “We built a bunch of factories before checking if anyone wanted our chips.”)

But the real cherry on top? That actually happened yesterday… and barely made a ripple because everyone was too busy obsessing over the earnings.

In case you missed it, Intel was still dragging around a federal class-action lawsuit, with investors accusing the company of hiding a $7 billion loss in its foundry business. That little surprise last year caused a $32 billion single-day market cap wipeout, and shareholders were foaming at the mouth (understandably, given their portfolios got curb-stomped).

(Source: Tom’s Hardware)

But on Wednesday, a federal judge tossed the case with prejudice… aka game over. Meaning there will be no appeals. The ruling basically boiled down to: “Yeah, Intel’s foundry was a chaotic science project, but they said as much. You were warned.” Honestly… kind of fair.

With that legal cloud finally gone, Intel just cleared one of its biggest overhangs. No more courtroom drama, no more potential billion-dollar payout lurking in the footnotes. Just clean air to keep restructuring without the SEC breathing down their neck.

Now, let’s be clear… this legal win doesn’t mean Intel’s foundry unit is suddenly a well-oiled machine. Far from it. The division pulled in $4.4 billion in revenue, but still managed to light $3.17 billion on fire in the process. In simpler terms: they’re selling chips, but losing money on every one. It’s like running a car wash where you charge $5 per wash and spend $20 scrubbing each tire by hand with imported soap.

That kind of burn rate isn’t just unsustainable… it’s a flashing red sign that the business model needs serious reworking. To stop blowing money out the wazoo, Intel’s now shifting focus to its next-gen 14A chip process, while quietly shoving the once-hyped 18A into the backseat… unless it’s for internal use. It’s a classic “reset the narrative” move, and honestly, probably overdue.

So yeah, they’ll take the win this week… two of them, actually. But the war’s not over. AMD is still crushing them in data centers. Qualcomm is creeping up in PCs. And Nvidia is now worth forty times more than Intel. Still, with headcount cut, capex restrained, and the lawsuit gone, Intel's finally giving off slight signs of life. If they can hit their Q3 target of up to $13.6 billion in revenue and scrape together breakeven earnings, we might actually have a floor forming. It’s not a comeback. Not yet. But yet again, Intel’s not digging their hole any deeper… and for their new CEO, that’s a positive sign.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Intel and Microsoft as mentioned in the article.