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The rally has a new backer
Intel has been the market’s favorite “maybe this time?” stock more than once, and Monday brought another reminder that Wall Street is leaning in. BNP Paribas upgraded the chipmaker from Underperform to Neutral and more than doubled its price target to $60, arguing that AI demand — especially the rise of agentic AI — is keeping server CPU appetite hot and Intel’s fabs fuller than they’ve been in years.
Why this matters for your portfolio
That matters because full factories + stronger pricing = the kind of math investors actually like. BNP sees Intel’s EBITA swinging from a $2.2 billion loss in fiscal 2025 to a $736 million profit in fiscal 2026, with that number potentially climbing to $4.6 billion in fiscal 2027. In plain English: the margin story is finally looking less like a horror movie and more like a reboot.
The foundry plot twist
Intel also gets a little extra shine from its manufacturing push. The company recently bought back Apollo Global’s 49% stake in its Ireland fab, which is one of those corporate moves that says, “We think we’ll need this capacity.” Add in Intel’s next-gen 14A process getting early customer reviews, and the foundry story starts looking less like a science project and more like a real business opportunity — if those conversations turn into actual design wins.
Still not all sunshine
Of course, this isn’t a fairy tale. BNP still flagged PC demand pressure from a memory supply crunch, and Intel keeps losing some share in servers to AMD and ARM. But for now, the AI tailwind is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and investors are mostly rewarding the idea that Intel’s factory crown might actually be worth something again.
Big picture: Intel doesn’t need perfection — it just needs progress. And right now, Wall Street is paying up for the possibility that the turnaround finally has a pulse.