This immediately led some to question how Intel would fund its massive expansion plan going forward. Intel explained that the demand environment had changed very suddenly during the quarter, which is why Intel couldn't have foreseen the results. Instead, in one fell swoop around $10B was cut from the guidance, on top of the $4-5B that Intel is losing this year due to the NAND sale. Since Intel had not pre-announced its downside results, investors were up for quite the shock when they received the downside results as well as guidance, especially given to what lengths Intel had gone to in April to reaffirm its full-year guidance. In other words, Intel remains a stock for the patient. Since the deal thesis for the stock hasn’t changed, investors who are still on the turnaround train are getting an ever more attractive price point to acquire shares from the shortsighted market that does not things like regaining process leadership. This means that 2022 is both financially as well as technologically the bottom for Intel.

Remember that the post-10nm turnaround already got delayed in 2020 because of the consecutive 7nm delay, a node (renamed to Intel 4) that will only start ramping by the end of the year. What this means for investors, though, is that they are still buying Intel for the promised turnaround that is (still) years away. Ultimately, what stood out the most to me was the discrepancy between the current demand environment (embodied in the horrendous quarterly results) and the incredible investments Intel kept making in contrast, with a record-breaking 5.3k net new employees (mostly engineers) that were added during the quarter. There are many moving parts that together made up the Intel ( INTC) Q2 Armageddon, although none of those were too surprising (to some extent, as Intel obviously missed by many billion dollars on revenue) and some were already discussed in my recent Intel downgrade. JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Investment Thesis

Tradeskillmaster desktop application