Intel shares surge after strong earnings beat

Intel (INTC) shares surged more than 20% in early trading on Friday after the company reported first-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations on both revenue and profit, along with stronger-than-expected guidance for the second quarter driven by robust data center demand, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

The company said on Thursday that it expects second-quarter revenue between $13.8 billion and $14.8 billion, above Wall Street expectations of $13.03 billion.

For the first quarter, Intel reported adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.29 on revenue of $13.6 billion. Analysts, according to Bloomberg consensus data, had expected EPS of $0.01 and revenue of $12.36 billion.

In the same period last year, the company posted EPS of $0.13 and revenue of $12.67 billion.

“The next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic. This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement.

“With a solid foundation in place, we are addressing this opportunity by listening to our customers and driving their success with our technical expertise and differentiated IP,” he said. “This deliberate reset to how we operate drove a sixth consecutive quarter of revenue above our expectations, as well as new and deepened relationships with strategic partners.”

Intel’s Data Center and AI business generated $5.1 billion in revenue, surpassing expectations of $4.41 billion.

Although Intel missed the early wave of the AI boom due to its lack of chips designed for AI model training, it is now beginning to capture a share of the expanding market.

This shift is being driven by the growing adoption of AI agents—semi- or fully autonomous systems that perform tasks on behalf of users—which are increasing demand for central processing units (CPUs). These chips are becoming more important for data center operators and hyperscale cloud providers as AI workloads evolve.

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev