Figure 1 Outlook: Intel Q 2 financial report countdown, data centers shoulder the main line of growth, and PC and OEM businesses still have variables

Figure 1 Outlook: Intel Q 2 financial report countdown, data centers shoulder the main line of growth, and PC and OEM businesses still have variables.

The 2026 Q2 financial report will be released after the U.S. stock market closes on July 23. market expectations Revenue in 2026Q2 will be US$14.45 billion, a year-on-year increase of 12.37%; earnings per share are expected to be US$0.08, a year-on-year loss. 1.

A brief review of the 26Q1 financial report The company's Q1 revenue reached US$13.6 billion, exceeding expectations for the sixth consecutive quarter, with a year-on-year increase of 7%; net profit surged 156% year-on-year, and profitability significantly improved. 2.

26Q2 financial report outlook Server CPU narrative has become the biggest focus before the financial report, and the pricing increase proves that "demand is stronger than supply" The emotional thread is switching from "PC cycle repair" to "PC cycle repair" CPU returns to the main stage of AI." Bernstein believes that the recovery in demand for server CPUs

coupled with the growth driven by intelligent AI The underlying change on the demand side comes from the shift in the focus of AI computing power from training to inference.

Chen Liwu said that the CPU is becoming increasingly important in the AI era, and the configuration ratio of CPU and GPU is accelerating from 1:8 to 1:1, and the extreme can reach 4:1, which means CPU will usher in structural incremental demand. Price signals verify that "demand is stronger than supply" rather than simply cost passing.

Intel in the past six months Multiple increases in consumer and server CPU pricing : Some SKUs of the consumer-grade Core Ultra 200 series have increased by 30-50 US dollars; the data center-level prices have increased even more steeply, and the high-end Xeon series has increased between 3% and 12%, with single-unit price adjustments ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Among them, the new recommended customer price of the flagship data center CPU Xeon 6980P has risen to US$13,955, an increase of US$1,495 from US$12,460 in 2025. Parallel to the price increase are adjustments on the organizational side. Two days before the financial report, Intel officially launched a new round of layoffs in the data center department.

Officials said it was aimed at optimizing the architecture and matching long-term business success without affecting the product roadmap. This move may improve operational efficiency, but attention needs to be paid to the impact on short-term execution.

Server CPU shipments and pricing trends, whether recovery in demand and increased pricing power can continue to translate into revenue growth, will be the key to determining market response.

OEM business: 18A process is the key variable The chip foundry business is not only the determinant of Intel's valuation ceiling, but also the largest source of risk at present. From the perspective of financial performance, Intel's foundry business is still in the "internal cycle" stage.

In the first quarter of 2026, Intel Foundry segment revenue was approximately US$5.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16%, but approximately US$5.25 billion of this was offset internally, indicating that the vast majority of revenue still comes from providing manufacturing services for Intel's own products, and revenue from external customers accounts for a very low proportion.

What is more noteworthy is that this segment recorded an operating loss of approximately US$2.44 billion during the same period, which further expanded from approximately US$2.32 billion in the same period last year. The profitability of the foundry business has not yet seen an inflection point.

The mass production progress of the 18A process is changing market expectations . CEO Chen Liwu is here The 54th Global Technology, Media and It was stated at the annual meeting that Intel 18A has supported Panther Lake mass production, and the yield rate has increased by approximately 7% per month, exceeding the company's internal expectations.

A more critical external signal comes from Trump’s recent public confirmation It has agreed to cooperate with Intel to design and produce chips in the United States; Bernstein judged that the initial cooperation will focus on low-volume, low-risk, low-end PC chips, which will be proof-of-concept in nature and have limited short-term revenue contribution,

but the symbolic significance is huge - the world's most valuable technology company chooses Intel for OEM, which is the most powerful credit endorsement for the 18A process.

Overall, compared with the conventional financial data such as short-term revenue and earnings per share disclosed in this financial report, the management's latest statements on the sustainability of the 18A process yield, the pace of production ramp-up, the tape-out progress of external customers, and the mass production schedule of cooperative projects

during this financial report conference call will become the core factors affecting Intel's stock price trend, and will also be the key basis for judging whether its foundry business can get out of losses and achieve commercialization breakthroughs.

The options market's forecast fluctuation for this Q2 financial report is ±15.21%, which is higher than the historical average, showing huge differences. While the server demand narrative is strong, the risks are: High expectation gap: The stock price has increased significantly during the year.

If the gross profit margin only remains at 39% or even lower than expected due to the 18A ramp-up costs, it will easily trigger a callback that "exhausts all the benefits." Macroscopic disturbance: If PC demand continues to decline in the second half of the year, it will drag down the overall revenue center.

Overall, this financial report is a key node to test the quality of Intel's two logical chains of "CPU returning to the main stage of AI" and "OEM turning around losses". The differentiation between businesses (strong data center, weak PC, and OEM improvement) will most likely be the main theme.

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