In 2024, Intel may record its first annual loss since the 1980s.
Intel Corp. announced its now former CEO Pat Gelsinger, who spent most of his more than 40-year career with the Santa Clara, California-based semiconductor manufacturer, had retired on Dec. 1.
Gelsinger, who took over as Intel’s chief executive in February 2021, pushed it to begin making chips for other semiconductor companies while simultaneously designing and manufacturing its own chips. His plan cost billions and has yet to deliver results.
In a Monday release, Intel said it had appointed David Zinser, an executive vice president, and CFO Michelle Johnston Holthaus, the CEO of Intel Products, as interim co-CEOs while the company’s board of directors searches for a new CEO.
The change initially sent Intel’s stock price up as high as $25.44 a share, but as of Tuesday afternoon, it had sagged back to about $22.50 a share. Since the beginning of August, it has hovered around the $20 per share mark. Since the beginning of 2024, its value has fallen by about 55 percent.
In addition, Intel’s stock is currently trading for less than half of the $58.18 it closed at on Jan. 31, 2021. Following its nearly three-year bear run, Intel received a significant downgrade in November when it was replaced on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) by rival chipmaker Nvidia Corp. At the time, Intel had the lowest stock price of any of the companies in the DJIA.
That followed a trend of steadily worsening financial results under Gelsinger’s stewardship, according to Intel’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At the end of 2023, according to its annual filing for the same year, Intel’s net income, or profit, came in at $1.675 billion, a drop from about $8 billion in 2022, about $19.9 billion in 2021, and about $20.9 billion in 2020.
When Intel last published an earnings report with the SEC on Nov. 11, it reported a net loss of about $19.1 billion through the first nine months of 2024.
