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Intel shares surge on earnings beat and strong revenue guidance

Intel stock jumped 10% on Friday after the company beat Wall Street expectations for profit and sales.

On Thursday, the chipmaker reported earnings per share of 41 cents, adjusted, versus the LSEG estimate of 22 cents. It posted $14.16 billion in revenue for the quarter, ahead of analyst expectations of $13.53 billion, but down 8% from the year-ago quarter. It marked Intel’s seventh consecutive quarter of declining sales.

The Friday boost was largely due to strong demand for PCs and management’s ability to stay on course for a number of initiatives it had previously laid out for the company.

Intel’s premarket run also comes after shares fell earlier in the week in the wake of reports that Nvidia, which dominates artificial intelligence chips, plans to expand into PC chips via a partnership with Arm.

Goldman Sachs analysts acknowledged that their expectations for Intel had been too cautious but added that they are concerned about Intel’s future transformation and foundry business, which is the company’s relatively new chip-manufacturing business.

“While our near-term estimates were clearly too cautious and we acknowledge Intel’s strong execution, particularly on its technology roadmap (i.e. 5 nodes in 4 years), we continue to perceive Intel’s pursuit of an internal foundry model as a challenge,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note to investors.

They also noted concerns over the company’s data center wallet share. Morgan Stanley analysts expressed similar concerns.

However, Intel’s AI performance and foundry business were positives for Morgan Stanley.

“The bigger positive headlines will come from the peripherals — foundry and AI commentary. We expect the stock to offer tactically positive risk reward from here, as the ongoing market recovery will make investors receptive to any of the longer term positives,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to investors.

They added that in the long run Intel’s “roadmap is a show-me situation for large customers.”

Intel is also on track to hit its goal of $3 billion in savings for the year, according to CEO Pat Gelsinger. JPMorgan analysts praised the savings in an investor note.

“The team is also executing well against its cost saving initiatives and indicated that they are on track with their plans for $3B in savings to COGS/Opex in 2023,” JPMorgan analysts wrote. They added that, although they see “continued solid execution” and “compute fundamentals continue gradually improving,” in their view, “the next 12 months will be the most difficult for the team.”

The JPMorgan analysts raised their price target from $35 to $37, writing that Intel’s next year of data center product launches and more could help predict how the company’s goals will progress over the next three to five years.

— CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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Bitcoin hits $80,000 for the first time as crypto traders bask in Trump election victory

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Bitcoin hits ,000 for the first time as crypto traders bask in Trump election victory

Budrul Chukrut | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Cryptocurrencies extended their rally on Sunday, with bitcoin touching $80,000 for the first time ever.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 4.5% at $79,800.19, according to Coin Metrics. Ether rose 3%, after passing the $3,000 level on Saturday. It last changed hands at $3,203.10.

Smaller coins saw bigger moves as investors continued to digest the implications of a second term for President-elect Donald Trump. The payments coin XRP surged 11%. The decentralized finance token tied to Cardano rocketed 40%. Memecoins dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin soared 17% and 31%, respectively.

“Crypto is poised to enter a golden era,” Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, said in a research note Friday. “Trump has promised to make America the ‘crypto capital of the world’ and his high level team is filled with strong crypto advocates … . The pro-crypto nature of his team, family, and donors increases the likelihood that Trump follows through on his campaign promises to the industry.”

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Bitcoin touches $80,000 on Sunday for the first time ever.

Bitcoin was deemed a safe asset regardless of the outcome of the election — it is not considered a security, even by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Trump has made big overtures about bitcoin like entertaining the idea of a strategic national bitcoin reserve and speaking about the need to keep all bitcoin mined in America.

Ether and other cryptocurrencies, however, stand to gain much more from the crypto-friendly regulatory environment that Trump has promised and appears to be a priority for many in his inner circle. For example, one reason the spot bitcoin ETFs didn’t see as much success as bitcoin ETFs is because they don’t distribute staking rewards. Many in the industry are hopeful that will change next year.

“In this environment, over the next two years we expect that bitcoin and other digital assets will trade significantly higher than the current all-time high,” Thorn said. “What was once an oppressive headwind in the world’s largest capital market will now shift to a tailwind, and no one is bullish enough.”

Bitcoin and ether have gained 18% and 32%, respectively, since election day. Coinbase rose 48% last week, its best week since January 2023.

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ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 image generations of presidential candidates prior to Election Day

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ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 image generations of presidential candidates prior to Election Day

In this photo illustration, the OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen with a photo of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

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OpenAI estimates that ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 requests to generate images of the 2024 U.S. presidential candidates in the lead up to Election Day, the company said in a blog on Friday.

The rejections included image-generation requests involving President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Vice President-elect JD Vance, OpenAI said.

The rise of generative artificial intelligence has led to concerns about how misinformation created using the technology could affect the numerous elections taking place around the world in 2024. 

The number of deepfakes has increased 900% year over year, according to data from Clarity, a machine learning firm. Some included videos that were created or paid for by Russians seeking to disrupt the U.S. elections, U.S. intelligence officials say.

In a 54-page October report, OpenAI said it had disrupted “more than 20 operations and deceptive networks from around the world that attempted to use our models.” The threats ranged from AI-generated website articles to social media posts by fake accounts, the company wrote. None of the election-related operations were able to attract “viral engagement,” the report noted.

In its Friday blog, OpenAI said it hadn’t seen any evidence that covert operations aiming to influence the outcome of the U.S. election using the company’s products were able to successfully go viral or build “sustained audiences.”

Lawmakers have been particularly concerned about misinformation in the age of generative AI, which took off in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. Large language models are still new and routinely spit out inaccurate and unreliable information.

“Voters categorically should not look to AI chatbots for information about voting or the election — there are far too many concerns about accuracy and completeness,” Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, told CNBC last week.

WATCH: AI likely to be less regulated and more volatile under second Trump presidency

AI likely to be less regulated and more volatile under second Trump presidency

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Tesla hits $1 trillion market cap as stock rallies after Trump win

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Tesla hits  trillion market cap as stock rallies after Trump win

Elon Musk on stage before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY on Sunday, October 27, 2024. 

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Shares of Tesla climbed more than 6% in midmorning trading Friday, pushing the electric vehicle maker’s market cap past $1 trillion.

The company’s stock has rallied about 27% this week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election and investors have grown optimistic that the former leader’s return to the White House could benefit Tesla. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has been a key ally for Trump throughout his campaign, pouring at least $130 million into a pro-Trump campaign effort.

Tesla had a market cap of $807.1 billion through Tuesday’s close. Before this week’s rally, shares of the carmaker were up about 1% for the year. Tesla’s stock is now up about 27% year to date.

Tesla market cap

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Tesla rejoins a growing club of tech names that are now worth more than $1 trillion, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, AlphabetAmazon and Meta (though all but Meta are worth more than $2 trillion). Tesla’s market cap first crossed the $1 trillion mark in October 2021.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has said that a potential Trump administration could spell less regulation for Tesla and other companies.

“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players (BYDNio, etc.) from flooding the U.S. market over the coming years,” Ives wrote in a note to clients this week.

Trump has said previously he may cut the federal $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit. Those credits have helped to drive sales of Tesla vehicles historically.

In its most recent earnings update, Tesla reported revenue of $25.18 billion and net income of $2.17 billion in the third quarter.

CEO Musk said on the earnings call that his “best guess” was that “vehicle growth” would reach 20% to 30% next year, due to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.”

Tesla has been promising, and developing, driverless vehicle technology for more than a decade. Its key U.S. competitor, Alphabet-owned Waymo, has pulled ahead and is already operating commercial robotaxi services in several major cities.

On the third-quarter call, Musk said he would use his sway with a Trump-Vance administration to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” Currently, approvals happen at the state level, which the CEO sees as a regulatory hurdle Tesla will need to overcome once it finally offers more than partially automated driving systems.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the year Tesla’s market cap crossed $1 trillion for the first time. Tesla’s net income was $2.17 billion in the third quarter. An earlier version misstated the figure.

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