Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger speaks during the Mobileye Global Inc. IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York on Oct. 26, 2022. Mobileye Global Inc., the self-driving technology company owned by Intel Corp., priced one of the biggest US initial public offerings of the year above its marketed range to raise $861 million.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel stock dropped 6% on Wednesday after the company gave investors an update on the company’s turnaround plan to become a chip manufacturing company competing with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Wednesday’s update featured Intel’s CFO, David Zinsner, explaining how the company would soon change the way it reports its financial results to give its foundry business, known as IFS, its own profit-and-loss statement, which would reveal the company’s manufacturing margins.
Intel’s new reporting structure could also help control costs at the chipmaker, which is seeking to trim as much as $10 billion from its costs over the next three years.
The update comes as investors continue to assess Intel’s turnaround plan under CEO Pat Gelsinger, which depends on catching up with TSMC’s manufacturing technology by 2026, a plan it calls “five nodes in four years.” Intel plans to use its own chips to work out problems in its manufacturing before opening up the factories to third-party companies.
If Intel catches up with TSMC, then it can compete for contracts to build high-performance chips from companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, which don’t run their own manufacturing and currently often opt for TSMC or Samsung manufacturing. Intel said it expected to announce a key customer for its foundry business later this year.
“The manufacturing group will now face the same market dynamics as their foundry counterparts,” Zinsner told analysts. “They’ll need to compete for volume through performance and price as internal customers will have the option to leverage third party foundries and to attract external foundry volume, they must do the same.”
Wednesday’s update was focused on how Intel would use its manufacturing capabilities for its own chips. It said more updates on the foundry business and third-party customers would come later this year. It said its own chip needs would contribute $20 billion in revenue to the unit next year.
Analysts on the call worried about Intel’s gross margins and asked how this plan would increase them. In April, Intel said its gross margin for the first quarter was 38.4%, down 51.3% in a year. Intel management said on Wednesday it was shooting for 60% margins.
“We think we have a good path to 60 [percent],” Zinsner said.
Separately, Intel said on Wednesday that it planned to sell 20% of an Austrian subsidiary, IMS Nanofabrication, to private equity firm Bain Capital in a deal that valued the unit at $4.3 billion.
“This will turn out to be one of the best acquisitions we’ve ever made, given that level of valuation and investment made,” Zinsner said on Wednesday.
Other chip stocks also fell on Wednesday amid a down day for tech stocks. AMD, Intel’s chief rival, fell nearly 6%, while Qualcomm fell over 3%. Nvidia, which has been boosted by the recent AI wave, fell less than 2%.
The logos of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether outside a cryptocurrency exchange in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024.
David Lombeida | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The crypto market’s bullishness may be tipping into speculative frenzy, if the latest MicroStrategy-style copycat is any indication.
On Monday, a little-known Canadian vape company saw its stock surge on plans to enter the crypto treasury game – but this time with Binance Coin (BNB), the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, excluding the dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether (USDT), according to CoinGecko.
Shares of CEA Industries, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker VAPE, rocketed more than 800% at one point after the company announced its plans. CEA, along with investment firm 10X Capital and YZi Labs, said it would offer a $500 million private placement to raise proceeds to buy Binance Coin for its corporate treasury. Shares ended the session up nearly 550%, giving the company a market cap of about $48 million.
Given the more crypto-friendly regulatory environment this year, more public companies have adopted the MicroStrategy playbook of using debt financing and equity sales to buy bitcoin to hold on their balance sheet to try to increase shareholder returns, pushing bitcoin to new records.
Now, with the S&P 500 trading at new records, the resurgence of meme mania and a pro-crypto White House supporting the crypto industry, investors are looking further out on the risk spectrum of crypto hoping for bigger gains.
In recent months, investors have rotated out of bitcoin and into ether, which led to a burst of companies seeking a similar treasury strategy around ether. SharpLink Gaming, whose board is chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, was one of the first to make the move. Other companies like DeFi Development Corp, renamed from Janover, are making similar moves around Solana.
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In the suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Florida, the company accused the merchants of selling “inferior imitations” of Trump-branded products on several online marketplaces, including Amazon, Walmart and eBay.
The Trump Organization company, which is owned by Trump, sells a variety of branded merchandise through its website, including a gold T1 smartphone. The Trump Organization alleges the online merchants didn’t license its trademarks and weren’t authorized resellers of genuine merchandise.
“By selling counterfeit products that purport to be genuine and authorized products using the TRUMP trademarks, defendants cause confusion and deception in the marketplace,” the complaint says.
Coffee mugs, hats, t-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with “Trump,” “Trump 2028,” and American flags were among the examples of alleged knockoffs listed in the suit.
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The Trump Organization intends to file a motion to seal an exhibit listing the merchants’ identities, according to the complaint.
The company is seeking to prevent the merchants from using Trump trademarks. It also asks a judge to compel Amazon and other online marketplaces to destroy the alleged counterfeit goods and close the merchants’ selling accounts.
Representatives from Amazon, Walmart and eBay didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Amazon, Walmart and eBay all operate thriving online marketplaces that allow third-party businesses to list and sell goods. The companies have all battled issues in the past around the sale of inauthentic or unsafe goods on their platforms.
Amazon sellers looked to cash in on Trump’s return to the White House earlier this year.
Sales of Trump-branded merchandise, including calendars, toilet paper and greeting cards, spiked in January, according to e-commerce marketing company Omnisend, which collected its data from seller software provider JungleScout.
In the lead-up to last year’s election, Amazon sellers made $140 million from Trump-related merchandise and $26 million from products promoting presidential candidate and former Vice President Kamala Harris, Omnisend found.
The Texas-based space company said in an updated prospectus Monday that it’s planning to sell about 16.2 million shares. The offering could raise up to $631.8 million.
Earlier this month, Firefly filed its plans to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “FLY.”
Its debut comes amid a renewed push in the space race, as billionaire-led companies such as Elon Musk‘s SpaceX funnel more money into space activities and startups try their luck at the public markets.
Space tech firm Voyager went public in June, while reusable rocket developer Innovative Rocket Technologies said it plans to debut through a $400 million special purpose acquisition company merger.
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Firefly’s public market launch also coincides with a revival in IPO activity as debilitating interest rates and an overhang from President Donald Trump‘s tariff plans begin to clear. Design software company Figma is slated to go public this week after raising its range.
Firefly makes rockets, space tugs and lunar landers, including satellite launching rockets known as Alpha. At the end of March, the company reported a sixfold jump in revenue from $8.3 million a year ago to $55.9 million.
The company also reported a net loss of about $60.1 million, up from a loss of $52.8 million a year ago, and said its backlog totaled about $1.1 billion.
Some of Firefly’s major backers include AE Industrial Partners, which led an early investing round in the company. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman invested $50 million in the startup this May, and Firefly says it has collaborated with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and NASA.