Intel Shares Plunge After Weak Forecast and Israel Factory Blast
Intel shares plummeted up to 28% after the company issued a weak fourth-quarter revenue forecast and reported a deadly factory explosion in Israel.
Shares of Intel Corp. plummeted between 20% and 28% in after-hours and premarket trading on October 30, 2026. The collapse followed a weak fourth-quarter revenue forecast of $15 billion to $16 billion, missing analyst estimates of approximately $17 billion. The company warned that a global PC market slowdown, driven by high memory chip prices and supply chain bottlenecks, will persist through the first half of 2027.
Intel reported third-quarter revenue of $16.5 billion, a 21% year-over-year increase. This growth was fueled by a 78% surge in data center and AI revenue to $7.3 billion. However, the Client Computing and Physical AI Group saw revenue fall 5% to $8.1 billion. The company also expects negative cash flow this year due to heavy capital spending on manufacturing expansion in Arizona and Ohio.
Financial headwinds were exacerbated by an October explosion at a manufacturing facility in Kiryat Gat, Israel, which killed two workers and caused a two-week production halt. Intel expects the incident to cost approximately $600 million in lost revenue over two quarters. The bleak outlook triggered a broader selloff in AI-linked and semiconductor stocks, including AMD, Nvidia, and TSMC.
CEO Lip-Bu Tan continues to lead a turnaround strategy focused on expanding the foundry business. While some reports focused on the guidance miss, other conflicting accounts claimed a $16.6 billion quarterly loss and planned job cuts of 15,000 people.
