Intel Sinks Despite Earnings Beat as AI Spending Rises: Can 14A Be the Catalyst?

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Intel Q2 2026 earnings conference call

Key Takeaways (AI-Generated)

Financial Performance

- Q2 revenue of $16.1 billion, $1.8 billion above guidance midpoint

- Non-GAAP gross margin of 41.8%, approximately 280 basis points better than guidance

- Non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.42 versus guidance of $0.20

- Operating cash flow of $7 billion with $30 billion in cash and short-term investments

Business Highlights

- 7th consecutive quarter of exceeding financial expectations with strongest revenue growth in 15+ years

- Intel 18A now in volume production with output 25% above target

- Successfully ramped multiple new products on 18A including Panther Lake and Lunar Lake

- Extended heterogeneous AI strategy through multi-year collaboration with SambaNova

Financial Guidance

- Q3 revenue guidance of $15.8 to $16.8 billion (midpoint $16.3 billion)

- Q3 non-GAAP gross margin forecast of 42%, tax rate of 11%, and EPS of $0.38

- 2026 CapEx raised to more than $20 billion, significantly above initial expectations

- Strong double-digit unit growth forecasted for server CPU industry in 2026 and 2027

Opportunities

- Surging demand for compute infrastructure globally creates meaningful opportunities in product and foundry businesses

- 18A and 14A process nodes positioning Intel competitively with advanced packaging technology

- Deepened collaboration with Google Cloud and multi-year partnership with SambaNova for AI infrastructure

- Cultural transformation showing tangible results with organization operating with greater efficiency and speed

Risks

- Industry facing severe supply constraints across leading-edge logic, silicon wafers, memory and substrates

- Supply shortages will persist for the foreseeable future affecting production capacity

Full Transcript (AI-Generated)

Operator

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Intel Corporation Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speakers presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press *11 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, simply press *11 again. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded.

And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Mr. John Pitzer, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Sir.

John Pitzer

Thank you, Jonathan, and good afternoon to everyone joining us today. By now, you should have received a copy of the Q2 earnings release and presentation. Both are available on our Investor Relations website, intc.com. For those joining us online today, this presentation is also available on our webcast window.

I am joined today by our CEO, Lip Bootan and our CFO, David Zinsner. Lip Boot will open up with comments on second quarter results and update the progress we're making on strategic priorities. Dave will then discuss our overall financial results including third quarter guidance before we transition to answer your questions.

Before we begin, Please note that today's presentation does contain forward-looking statements based on the environment as we currently see it. As such, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties. It also contains reference to non GAAP financial measures that we believe provide useful information to our investors.

Our earnings release, most recent annual report on Form 10K and other filings with the SEC provide more information on specific risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. They also provide additional information on our non GAAP financial measures including reconciliation where appropriate to our corresponding GAAP financial measures. With that, let me turn it over to Lippo.

Lip Bootan

Thank you, John and good afternoon everyone. Q2 was another quarter of solid execution. Revenue, gross margin earning per share were above our guidance. This marks the 7th consecutive quarter of exiting our financial expectations. Our core message is simple. Strong demand for our products continue to outpace our growing supply.

Our design manufacturing execution is improving and operating discipline we put in place 15 months ago is beginning to show tangible results. Today, we are seeing the strongest revenue growth in more than 15 years. Our cultural transformation continues and our organization is already operating with greater efficiency, moving faster, making better decisions and staying closer to the customers.

Our recent announcement to deepen our collaboration with Google Cloud will help to accelerate the transformation as we fully embrace an AI first mentality throughout operations. We also continue to strengthen our leadership team with world class talent. The surging demand and rapid build out of compute infrastructure across the world creates A meaningful opportunity for us in our product business as well as our foundry business.

Industry is facing one of the most severe supply constraints in its history across leading edge logic, silicon wafers, memory and subscripts. These shortages will persist for the foreseeable future. Intel is well positioned to benefit from this strong sustained demand with three strategically important assets, our X86 CPU franchise, our advanced packaging technology and our vast wafer foundry network.

As AI expands from training to inference and increasingly to agentic and multi agent systems, general purpose server CPU density continue to increase and our core server CPU. Deal franchise is growing faster than ever. Demand signals from our customers are driving increased confidence and as Dave will discuss in more detail, we are substantially increasing our investments to support this improving demand outlook.

Let me talk first about Intel Foundry. My confidence in our Foundry process road map has grown significantly since joining over a year ago. I am more confident than ever of the strategic in significant and unique value proposition of Intel Foundry during Q2. Our factories across Intel 7, Intel 3 and Intel 18A exceeded internal volume targets driven by improving yields, better cycle times and increasing wafer starts.

18 A output increased meaningfully in the quarter. Yields continue to track ahead of expectations. We are now ramping multiple new products on 18 A while supporting growing demand for our lead products including Pentalic and Wild Card Lick. I keep raising the bar on the internal targets and the team continues to meet the challenge.

The successful volume ramp of 18 A for our internal products provide important validations as our Intel foundry engage with external customer. We also began reproduction of 18 AP, providing additional performance and power advantages while maintaining IP and design compatibility with Intel 18A, positioning 18 AP as a competitive node for external customers.

Looking beyond 18 A, I'm encouraged by our progress on Intel 14A. Defect density and transistor performance are all outpacing 18 A Development. PDK 0.5 is now complete and PDK 0.9 is on track for October. We continue to build out and validate the IP portfolio for 14A as we position the 14 A family for broad based adoptions across a wide range of customers.

I'm pleased to see the increasing momentum on customer engagements for Intel 14A and I'm increasingly confident that the 14 A will be highly competitive process offering across key vectors of performance, power density, cost and schedule. With encouraging external customer progress and increased demand for our internal products. We remain on track for 14 A reproduction for our internal products in second-half of 2027 and we make the decision in Q2 to fully committed to high volume RAM in 2028.

Lastly, on advanced packaging, customer interest for EMIP continue to be very high. Technology is compelling, providing capabilities for advanced AI silicon solutions, which are not possible with today's mainstream offerings. We continue to have a growing EMIP backlog. Yield and reliability are hitting targets and we focused on ramping the technology into high volume and high quality to support customer ramps in 2027.

Turning to Intel products, we recently renamed our PC business to our Client Computing and Physical AI Group or CCPG. We did this to recognize the. Growing opportunity for AI at the edge. I'm excited to have a new strengthened leadership driving this effort in our core PC client segment. Intel 18A is now in volume production across multiple commercial and consumer products.

Our factory output continues to increase sequentially every month. The successful high volume RAM OF18A for our internal products provides important validation as Intel foundry engage with external customer. We still have work to do to establish strong footprint in the edge and physical AI ecosystem, but see this opportunity as important future growth driver.

Our data Center AI group deliver solid quarter demand accelerate across crowd and enterprise as customers increasingly recognize the critical role that CPUs in general and X86 CPUs in particular play in the AI infrastructure. Q2 year over year server growth was the strongest on record and Zeon 6 continue to be one of the fastest ramping products in Intel history reflecting improving execution and strong customer demand.

We are also strengthen our outlook with the additional strategic customer wins and long term agreements in Q2. Our top priority is to ramp capacity and improve factory output as quickly as possible to support customer demand even as we work to improve our competitive road map. We also extended our heterogeneous AI strategy to multi year collaboration with Samba Nova.

We are pleased with their growing momentum as we work with them to drive performance and power improvements with this aggregated inference. Lastly, we continue to make steady progress in our newly announced design services business with revenue growing nearly three time year over year. We see tremendous opportunities to leverage our strong X86 space general purpose computing franchise to build more purpose built computing products for the AI era.

Our unique assets in end to end design, our IP portfolio combined with access to our leading edge wafer and packaging capabilities position us well to win this fast growing space. We are already making great strides in expanding our purpose field portfolio from networking to compute and eventually accelerators. Our recently announced collaboration with Fortinet for their security processor is a strong step forward in our ASIC strategy in the quarter.

As we look ahead, I'm excited to see new Intel take shape. We are operating with greater speed, accountability and customer focus. While there's still significant work ahead, our priorities are clear leverage on our X86 computing franchise to strengthen our product leadership and establish Intel Foundry as a world class wafer and packaging foundry business.

Intel is uniquely positioned to benefit from the overwhelming demand for compute as the entire industry continue a rapid and sustained build out of compute infrastructure. We are the only company that can design, manufacturing, build the entire range of computing solutions from general purpose. Additional CPUs and GPUs to more purpose built ASICS and CPUs optimized for agentic AI.

As we increasingly move from compute dominant by system on chip towards system in package, our advanced packaging and wafer foundry capabilities become increasingly vital assets. Our strategy is clear and pace of execution is accelerating. Opportunities in front of us are substantial. Our strategy is showing earlier results and I'm confident that Intel is well positioned to help define the next era of computing.

I want to thank our employees around the world for their focus, discipline, hard work everyday and also thanks our many customers, partners and suppliers for their continuous trust in Intel. With that, let me turn the call over to Dave to work through our financial results in more detail.

David Zinsner

Thank you, Lip. BU. We delivered another strong quarter driven by robust demand and disciplined execution that resulted in upside to our supply. Second quarter revenue was 16.1 billion dollars, $1.8 billion above the midpoint of our guide. And collectively our AI driven businesses grew greater than 70% year over year including record data center growth and contributed approximately 70% of revenue.

It's important to note that despite exceeding our expectations for wafer outs in the quarter, strength in demand continues to outstrip our growing supply. Q2 non GAAP gross margin was 41.8%, approximately 280 basis points better than guidance. The upside was driven by higher revenue, better yields and higher ASPs due to mix and pricing actions.

We delivered second quarter non GAAP earnings per share of $0.42 versus our guidance of $0.20 on higher revenue, stronger gross margins and solid operating leverage. Q2 operating cash flow was $7 billion and we exited the quarter in a strong liquidity position including approximately $30 billion in cash and short term investments.

Our Q2 results reflect the ongoing progress in our operational transformation. We're moving faster, holding ourselves more accountable and staying closer to our customers. Moving to segment results, CCPG revenue was $8.9 billion, up 15% sequentially and better than our expectations. The client Tam continued to hold up well despite broad component constraints and price inflation.

Our AIPC revenue grew 26% sequentially and now represents 2/3 of our client revenue mix. In addition, we saw solid performance in our edge deployments, now representing roughly 10% of CCPG revenue. Operating profit for CCPG was 2.3 billion dollars, 26% of revenue and down approximately $173 million quarter over quarter due to inventory charges taken to optimize our factory network to overall customer demand across client and server.

Our client group has now brought 18 A to full scale with 400 plus designs for series three across consumer and commercial. During a period of inflationary pressures, CCPG brought Core Series 3 to market at the ideal time on its a stepping to provide cost optimized mainstream compute capabilities. Our integrated Arc graphics solution continues to see strong market adoption with 40 plus Arc integrated graphics designs across creator, workstation, commercial and gaming targeted designs.

Building on our success in gaming notebooks, in Q2 CCPG also introduced Intel Arc G series processors, a new family of products designed for next generation handheld gaming systems, an additional vector for growth. On the commercial side, activations for our market leading V Pro manageability software have surged 1500% over the last four quarters. Underpinning that, manageability and enhanced security are critical must haves in the agentic workplace.

We expect enterprise adoption of AI to be a long term tailwind for CCPG, but our AI driven market prospects don't stop there as the edge and physical AI opportunity is likely to at least match the client Tam over time. CCPG showcased this growing opportunity with 130 Series 3. Sign wins for edge AI applications including brain and control deployments for robotics.

DCAI revenue was $6.3 billion, an increase of 24% sequentially and 59% year over year, meaningfully ahead of expectations. The result was driven by strong demand across hyperscale and enterprise. We also continue to see strong momentum in our purpose built silicon product line with revenue up roughly 20% sequentially and nearly tripling year over year.

Operating profit for DCAI was 2.5 billion dollars, 40% of revenue and up approximately 1 billion dollars quarter over quarter on higher revenue, improved product margins and lower operating expenses. Within the quarter, DCAI launched Zeon 6 Plus codenamed Clearwater Forest, our first server class product on 18 A. The team announced rack scale and disaggregated inference innovations with partners Samba, Nova and Foxconn.

In addition, DCAI further enhanced our connectivity offerings by introducing new controller and adapter products supporting data center, enterprise and telco applications, which scale from 1:50 100 Gigabit Ethernet. Turning to Intel Foundry revenue of $5.8 billion was up 6% sequentially on higher fab volumes driven by strong growth in Intel 18A with output approximately 25% above target and up more than 50% quarter over quarter.

External foundry revenue was $293 million in the quarter. Intel foundry operating loss in Q2 was $2.1 billion and $348 million better quarter over quarter as higher yields, improved cycle times and increased factory scale across Intel 43 and 18 a drove improved wafer costs. Progress on 18A has been very good.

Intel Foundry has driven down the cost of our primary Panther Lake skew by roughly 50% year to date and is on track for an additional 20% this year with further meaningful reductions planned and in 2027 within the quarter. In addition to delivering output above our expectation, Intel Foundry also entered risk production for 18 AP and met critical milestones towards delivering the .9 PDK for Intel 14A in October.

We stepped up investments in Q2 for Intel 14A to prepare for risk production in 2027 and committed high volume ramps in 2028. Now turning to guidance, looking ahead, customers continue to signal a strong and sustainable spending environment driven by the unprecedented demand for AI compute. Industry wide supply constraints across wafers, memory and substrates remain the dominant challenge our customers are facing to support the AI infrastructure build out.

Our wafer output across our major nodes exceeded expectations from 90 days ago and Q3 quarter to date. 18A yields are trending ahead of targets set in March. Even with this strong execution and the positive trends as we enter the quarter, supply remains very tight and the near term linearity of our supply growth is more skewed towards the end of Q3 and into Q4, especially for servers.

From an end market perspective, we expect PC consumption to be sub seasonal in the second-half of the year and down low double digits percent for all of 2026, impacted by rising memory prices and constraints. This is in line with industry peers and 3rd party estimates. At the same time, improving supply, a strengthening product portfolio and encouraging tailwinds for edge deployments provide us with some positive offsets.

Our outlook for server CPU demand has improved again since our last earnings report and we're forecasting strong double digit unit growth for the industry this year and next with momentum extending into 2028. Taken together, we're guiding Q3 revenue to a range of 15.8 to $16.8 billion at the midpoint of $16.3 billion.

We forecast gross margin of 42 percent, a tax rate of 11% and EPS of $0.38, all on a non GAAP basis. We continue to tightly manage non GAAP operating expenses to roughly $16.5 billion for the year and we expect non controlling interest or NCI to net to approximately $250 million in each of Q3 and Q4 of this year and be approximately $1.1 billion for 27 and 28 on a GAAP basis.

Turning to CAPAX, due to strong customer demand signals, we're raising our outlook for 2026 and now expect our CAPAX to be more than $20 billion, which is up significantly versus our expectation. Entering the year, we're also aggressively locking in tool purchase orders from our vendors, accelerating our clean room build outs and actively securing supply of substrates and memory.

As a result, we're forecasting 2027 capital expenditures to be significantly above the 2026 levels with the vast majority spent across our US network. In fact, as we look back from 2021 through 2026, our total capital spending and tools and space in the US is approaching $100 billion, significantly higher than any other semiconductor company over that time frame.

We remain committed to tightly matching our expenditures with customer demand and remain financially disciplined as we capture the growth ahead. In closing, Q2 was another strong quarter financially and operationally. The client Tam is unfolding as expected and server CPU demand continues to far outpace available supply.

Emerging markets in physical AI, purpose built silicon, advanced packaging and external wafers are each multibillion dollar annual revenue opportunities for us. In the not too distant future, I'm confident in our ability to leverage our broad IP portfolio to solve our customers most pressing needs and drive long term value for our shareholders. With that I'll turn it over to John to start the Q&A.

John Pitzer

Thank you, Dave. As a reminder, please ask one question and a brief follow up in order to allow us to accommodate as many callers as possible. With that Jonathan, can we take the first question?

Operator

Certainly and our first question for today comes from the line of Ben writes us from Milius Research. Your question please.

Ben Reitzes

Hey, guys, thanks a lot. And quarter, I wanted to ask about the CapEx increase by about 3 billion this year and significantly next. What does that imply for your foundry customers? Does it mean that you've received some hard orders for 14A or 18AP? And then what does it mean for packaging, if you could delineate between the two? Thanks.

David Zinsner

OK, let me just write that down. OK, so let me take the second one first. You know the Capax is fairly broad based, it's going to include advanced packaging as lift. We talked about we're pretty excited about our prospects on Emib T and so we will be investing in that. That said, you know the cost of a fab for the front end is much more expensive than a packaging facility.

So it will be skewed towards the towards the the front end. But nevertheless both of them will be important to us. As it relates to customers, I would just say that these increased investment is a signal of our confidence in customers across all of our business units. You know, we feel very confident, particularly in places where we've gotten long term agreements that we now have the signal to be able to, you know, kind of forecast out what the outlook looks like for the next few years in terms of demand.

And we're putting forth the capacity in anticipation of that across all of our businesses. That said, as I said in the prepared remarks, you know we remain very disciplined around spending and Lippu I think has beaten out into us that we will put CapEx in place when we feel very confident we can generate a very good return on it.

You know these fabs that we're building, obviously you know, initially, you know, from a cash flow perspective, our net cash out, you know that's why you see the CapEx going up next year. But over time they generate significant return. And particularly now as we you know migrate towards a model where we keep these processes on longer, you know, the returns are quite, quite significant. In fact, we're seeing that in Intel 10 seven today given the the length of time we had that process in place.

Ben Reitzes

Ben, do you have a quick follow up? Yeah, hi. Thanks. The your competitor today talked about raising the CPU Tam by 20-30 to 220 billion with a kegger I believe of 45% or something really great. Can can you comment on that? Do you, are you seeing the same thing and do you think, what do you think of either that number or the growth rate and your ability to fulfill it? Thanks.

David Zinsner

Yeah, I mean, without putting a number out there, I mean, we obviously recognize that this is a strong market. It's going to grow significantly. You know, Lip boost talked in the past about, you know, the ratio of CPU to GPU going up and we now believe we're almost in parity at this point and and could eventually even skew more to CPU's on a unit basis.

So I think this market's great. You know, we think we have a strong position in the market, an opportunity to capture a significant. Significant share of that market, you know it's going to be a big number. You know whether anybody can actually predict exactly the number and pinpoint the number, I'm not sure they can.

But from all the inputs we're getting from our customers in terms of the level of spend and also the long term agreements we've put in place and the visibility we've gotten, we feel like the growth is going to be significant. Thanks, Ben. Jonathan, we have the next question please.

Operator

Certainly. And our next question comes from the line of Joe Moore from Morgan Stanley.

Joe Moore

Great, thank you. I guess following up on the the CPU comment, you know, what do you think happens to your market share in the server space? You know you have fabs now which would seem to be an advantage. Do you think that helps to gain share this year? And then as you think about the next five years, you know, your competition versus both AMD and also versus ARM, just how are you, how are you guys thinking about, you know, the prospects for regaining lost share?

Lip Bootan

Yeah, maybe I can start 1st and then Dave can chip in. So I think clearly it's a good question. I think I mentioned earlier the demand is quite strong and then the, you know, in terms of agentic AI and influence, the ratio of parity, CPU and GPU. And so I think the demand is strong and I think the challenge right now is more how to grow our supply and to meet the customer requirement.

But saying that, you know, clearly, you know, on the server side, data center side, I think we have a strong road map. We have Clearwater, Forest, Diamond. And also Coral rapid with the SMT. Involved so I think we continue working on the improving the competitiveness against our competitor and I think clearly it's very important to drive the improvement in the single thread and also multi threading and multi threading will be coming in the color rapid.

And so I think all the above we have been really driving that. I think regarding your second question in terms of the, you know clearly is a great partner for us and you know we have a strong relationship there and you know Renee and Mars are a good friend of mine and we really focus on not just the ARM base CPU and also on the ASIC foundry side they can be a great partner and customer and especially in the IP front.

And so in all I think in that we compete quite well. We have a strong product group map some area we are still behind, but we are catching up very fast and we try to leapfrog some of this CPU architecture and we are putting major effort into it and that time will tell.

Joe Moore

Judy you have a quick follow up question. Yeah, thank you. Just separately, the on the CapEx, you know, is there still a sort of net versus gross aspect to that or or is that are you kind of more, you know clear on that And then you know how do you think about how you're apportioning that between internal and and foundry? Is there a point where you'll be able to delineate that for us? How much is for external customers?

David Zinsner

Right, Yeah, there is a gross to net. You know, at this point now most of the gross to net is Amick or the investment tax credit. You know it's it's running in the kind of single digit low single digit billions right now. Although, you know, as we progress, I think, you know, we'll start to see that become bigger in terms of chunkiness at the end of the day, you know, it's a timing thing.

But at the end of the day, we're getting $0.35 on the dollar back from the investment tax credit on everything we invest in the US. And as I said in my prepared remarks, the lion's share of our capital spend is devoted to the US. So it should be pretty significant. But like I said, it'll, it'll, there'll be a delay factor because, you know, we've got to build the factory and then we can start claiming tax credits on the factory.

And then we have to get it, you know, once we're putting the tools and it's got to be all the way to production ready before we can claim any sort of credits on the tools. And so you know, and then you of course you have to file it with, with the IRS. So there's, there's a, there's a bit of a delay from the time you spend to the time you get it back.

But yes, there is a gross to net. I think, you know, from an investment perspective, you know, I'm not sure we look at it exactly that way and we really look at how many wafer starts we want in a given node and we invest to the wafer starts we're looking for on the front end. And but you know, we, we, we have a point of view based on all the demand drivers within the business of what that number looks like.

And, and that's what we're putting in the purchase reps with our suppliers to be able to, to, to meet those expectations. And of course, we remain nimble, you know, as as we get, you know, more information and, and we progress on the packaging side, we are already getting significant backlog. So we already know we we need to ramp that up and that's partly our own internal, you know, manufacturing facilities, but we also need to procure substrates from, from vendors and there's some requirements there in terms of putting money up in advance of getting the, the, the substrates.

So we're making those investments probably more quickly right now to to get ourselves ready for that. Thank you, Joe. Jonathan, can we have the next question please?

Operator

Certainly our next question comes from the line of Stacy Raskin from Bernstein Research. Your question.

Stacy Raskin

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask about client. I think everybody kind of had an inkling the data center was going to be pretty strong. I, I was surprised at the client strength. And I know you talked about demand holding up pretty well. I know you're ramping pants on some of the new products, but I, I guess was it all pricing that drove that revenue strength or was there something else going on?

And I guess if you could maybe comment on what your expectations are for client in the second-half relative to an end market that sounds like it's going to be a worse? Been typical as as we move into into Q3 and Q4,

David Zinsner

yeah, I mean client obviously exceeded expectations. I would say it was largely ASP of which some of that was mixed related. Some of that was you know our own you you know like for like changes in in ASP's where we thought you know we had seen some inflation on our cost and needed to pass that on to the end customer.

You know when you look at it year over year, it's definitely down that market. It had a really good 2025 because of the windows refresh. So you know, it's coming off a little bit as it relates to that. And then you know, of course you know, memory in terms of cost and even availability I think has has caused that market to be a little softer, but we we kind of skewed the mix to the higher end.

And and that helped a lot in terms of ASP's and helped it perform. I'd say as we look into next quarter probably on a revenue basis it's going to be kind of flattish for us overall. CCPG is like likely to be up a bit, but I think it will be driven by good growth on the edge and client will be flattish.

Underlying that the market is softer. I mean they are, you know, I think that market is struggling with the memory dynamics in the marketplace. So you know, we think it'll be you know down in the quarter, but because they have been living relatively tight with inventory on CPU's, we likely would see some build in CPU's for Q and then Q4.

I think it will be, you know, we'll start to experience that in our own business and be soft. The good news for us is we need it because we need the CPUs for the data center side. We can't fulfill the demand as Lipton was mentioning. So you know, we'll pivot as much of the production as possible over to CPUs and data centers to try to do our best to catch up to what is a pretty significant difference between our ability to supply and the demand out there.

Stacy Raskin

Stacy, do you have a quick follow up? I I do. Thank you. You, you talked about the inventory charges in in client. I guess what were those and how big were they? And, and if I look at that, you're kind of guiding gross margins, you know, sort of flattish in the next quarter. If I take out the charges then does that imply that the gross margin guide is actually down sequentially?

David Zinsner

Oh, OK. So let me let me unpack it. So just sorry, Stacey, you're talking about inventory on our balance sheet for client or you're talking about No, no, no, you, you talked about inventory charges that the margins in the client. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't follow that. Yeah, OK. Yeah, we took, we had some products where they weren't fully completed from a match set perspective and it just made better economic sense for us to try to pivot more to some of our other products and not complete them given the the challenges around match set.

So given it was somewhat stranded inventory, we wrote that down and you're right, we are guiding flat quarter to quarter. So you know, obviously we'll we, we get a lift from not expecting to have that right down in the second quarter. The offset of that is even though like Panther Lake and Granite are doing better in terms of their cost quarter to quarter, they're also becoming a really significant part of the mix and they're still below the corporate average because they're still relatively early in their life cycle.

So that's weighing the margins down a little bit on the offset to the lift we get in terms of the reserves and why we think things will be flat. But eventually both of those things turn into a tailwind, you know, as, as as yields improve on 18 a further, we do expect, you know margins to improve on Panther Lake and they will be above the corporate average and that will help start lift lifting the margins there.

And and you know, obviously we're keenly focused on improving gross margins over time. I would say, you know, you know, while there's a lot of puts and takes and gross margins, our number one goal this year, which everyone in finance here can attest to because I was a dog with a bone on this, was to get gross margins comfortably into the 40s in every quarter.

And I think the team did a really good job getting there, you know, at least for the first two quarters and our outlook for Q3 would suggest the same. So our goal is to be solidly in that and then, you know, we can kind of pivot from there and look, look to improve the gross margins off of that base. Thanks, Stacy. Jonathan, we have the next question please.

Operator

Certainly. Our next question comes to the line kind of Timothy A Curry from UBS, Your question please.

Timothy Arcuri

Thanks a lot. Dave, you made a comment that there's a lot of capacity coming online toward the end of this quarter. So I guess that implies a pretty big step up in revenue for Q4. If I assume that you're still kind of under shipping the market, I think you implied you're under shipping at least last quarter by like more than a, you know billion dollars.

So if in September you're under shipping by a similar amount, then it would seem to suggest that Q4 is going to be a pretty, pretty big. Is that the right way to think about it? Can you just provide some puts and takes around that?

David Zinsner

Yeah, I mean, obviously we only guide 1/4 out which would be my standard response. That said, yes, I mean, of course if we are able to start to see inventory improve or supply improve towards the end of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter, we would expect a lift from that. I would point out that while things will improve, we will not catch up.

We will be behind in in the fourth quarter and you know, I think the team internally, you know, it's tight with with wafers internally. I'm not I wouldn't dismiss that, but they have done a very good job, you know, trying to meet demand and upside us upside lipu and IA bit in terms of what they've been able to accomplish.

But our supply is a combination of the wafers that we manufacture internally plus, you know, advanced, advanced packaging like substrates. We've got tea. We have memory and so procuring all of that has also you know a bit of a choke point for us. In fact, I'd say in some of those areas are probably our most challenged parts of our supply chain.

So you know, we're working to improve that, that you know, while front end wafers can be a little bit more linear in terms of our improvement, some of those are a bit chunkier. And so you know, we we start to see some some of the log jam break in towards the end of the third quarter, which which is why we're more flattish this quarter, but the upside in the fourth quarter.

Timothy Arcuri

Tim, do you have a follow up question? I do. Yeah, Dave. So the year over year drop through on gross margin was pretty good in March and June based on the guidance that kind of falls back to the low fifties, which is sort of within your 40 to 60% that you've talked about for a drop through. Is that still the right way to think about it? I mean, I'm just trying to see if you can give us some puts and takes into next year. Thanks.

David Zinsner

Yeah. I mean longer term, I think and you know we'd expect that to be somewhat the fall through somewhere in the 40 to 60 range. I mean every quarter has got unique dynamics to them that you know that affect whether you're at the low end of that range or at the high end of the range or at the middle midpoint. But I think it's a good, you know, relatively good rule of thumb for us. Thank you, Tim. Jonathan, can we have the next question?

Operator

Certainly Our next question comes from the line of Victoria from Bank of America Securities. Your question please,

Vivek Arya

but thanks for taking my question. Lipu, you mentioned increased confidence in engaging with external foundry customers and I'm curious when will that confidence be backed by actual customer announcements? And then related to that, I think you are planning to raise CapEx. How much should we be expecting a CapEx increase for next year and how much of that CapEx increase is for external customers versus just expanding capacity for your internal needs? Thank you

Lip Bootan

so much for question. I think I will address the the confident that I have and then I think Dave will talk about the CapEx increase. So first of all, I think you know the for the 18. I think we have this 18 AP is in the rich product. Now and I would be ready for the before the end of this year.

Clearly we see a 5% enhanced performance and then then 18A and then the 18A yield and the production I think we're starting to see strong. And then in term, in term of pentalic, we can see that in the ramping and the volume. But let's focus on the 14 A, 14 A, our PDK 0.5 complete and 0.9 for 14 A is on track for October and that's a very important milestone.

And I see the year for you know 256 SRAM and the defect density, the performance ahead of the schedule that we I put a very tough schedule for my team. They all met and they see that and then risk production for 14 A will be second-half of 2027 and then the commit volume production in 2028.

So I think all, all the engagement, the customer, the feedback have been very positive, tremendous demand for our own products and also external foundry customer engagement that give me the confidence the moment they're starting to see the 0.9 PDK, the yield they're starting to get excited about what kind of product they want to run that and what my how much capacity we can provide them.

So those are very positive sign that they are really serious going forward and that's why as I mentioned earlier, I don't put cutbacks unless I see the year performance, the IP is ready to serve the customer and also customer engagement, the level engagement I see then Dave and I were starting to put cutbacks to work. So Dave,

David Zinsner

yeah, I maybe it might make sense to start with 26 and just unpack CapEx just so it's clear, you know, we invested a lot in space over the last few years. So we are in a very good place in, in terms of space. There's still obviously a little investment to facilitize some of the some of the factories, but you know, it's it's relatively modest.

So we're really where all the CapEx or most of the CapEx dollars are going to at this point is tooling will increase tooling in 26 by 40% relative to 25. So it's that we're, we're investing a significant amount in tooling and it's where you might expect it's Intel 3, it's ATV, it'll be 18. API purposely didn't mention a number for 20, 27 because you know, we're, we're, we're still working out the, the exact details of what number we'll land at.

And you know, typically in this industry, you release that number, you know, it's really at the very beginning of the year. But I did want to give investors at least a line of sight to expect that the number will be up. But you'll just have to bear with me. I think we need another quarter or two to to really solidify the number and then you know where it's going to as I said, it's going to both you know we're we're we're investing for for all of our business units both internally and externally.

And and you know, we we take a holistic view of what our wafer demand will look like from from all of those customers and we build capacity that is aligned with that view.

Vivek Arya

Beck, do you have a quick follow up? Yes, thank you John. So the follow up question Dave is on on the balance sheet. So as you are planning these investments for the back half of the year and into next year, how are you thinking about the balance sheet? Do you think that the success you are seeing in your product business on the CPU side, do you think that is enough to kind of fund a lot of these investments or or, you know, will something else be required? Thank you.

David Zinsner

Yeah, it's a good question for that. I mean, we, we obviously we feel like we're in a really good place from a balance sheet perspective. We have over $30 billion of cash. We have a $10 billion revolver. So we've got $40 billion of liquidity. You know, that enabled us to delever, which we felt was important to keep us solidly in investment grade territory, which you know we wanted to do.

You know, obviously the fact that revenue and profitability and EBITDA are all expanding helps a lot in terms of the cash flow that throws off to the business. And additionally we have you know I don't roughly call it $10 billion of what are called non core assets, you know, that can still be monetized on the balance sheet.

And although we're not, you know, we don't, we're not anxious in any stretch to do anything there that's available to us in the event that we need it. And we have seen by the way our customers willing to invest with us and we've had prepays from customers that we've then that has enabled us to unlock capacity. That's that's helped us.

That said, you know, you know, if we're super successful, which we which we're. We're driving to, you know, we may need to tap the capital markets to, to to drive some more or drive some more investment. And you know, we'll stay tuned if we, if we need to do that, we'll certainly keep the shareholders apprised. Thank you, Vivek. Jonathan, can we have the next question please?

Operator

Certainly. Our next question comes to the line of CJ Muse from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your question please.

CJ Muse

Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I guess maybe a follow up to a prior question. And Dave, I know you don't want to guide out more than 1/4, but but curious how we should be thinking about shape of the server kind of revenue recovery here as you bring on capacity, you know both this year and next.

And as part of that, you know, how, how should we be thinking both from a unit and an ASP perspective, you know, as we go to the second-half of 26 and and into 27?

David Zinsner

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, obviously I, you know, we're driving as well maybe step back and say all of our server wafers are procured internally for the most part, you you know, some of the ASIC stuff isn't, but you know, for the most part it's all procured and we are investing, you know, heavily and expanding the wafer starts in our key nodes.

In particular, the most important node for us on servers is Intel 3 because that's how we that's, that's our node to produce Granite Rapids. And you know, we're seeing tremendous demand there. In fact is as strong as the band is across all of our products within data center. Granite Rapids is extremely tight because the reception there has been fantastic.

So you know, we are, you know, building capacity there over time, you know, it will be a little bit chunky, but I think in general we have a pretty good ramp of Intel 3 planned for the rest of this year and next year. The challenge as I said is, you know, it's not just the front end that we have to expand capacity and we also have to expand capacity on the back end.

You know, that then gets into, you know, areas that are are tight like substrates. And so you know, we're working to expand that. I think we they, they did a good job in the first half of the year getting more capacity, but more work to be done to to drive that to the levels that that we would need.

I think when we're talking about the market in general, we're talking about it up from a units perspective. That's you know, we think the growth rate on a units basis looks quite good. Obviously the units are getting more weighted average core counts and you know we generally this market is priced on an ASP per core basis.

So as you get more cores, you all be easily get more you know ASP uplift. And so that will definitely be a component of the revenue growth in this business and you know gives us some real confidence that this is going to be well north of a double digit CAGR for us from a in terms of in terms of growth rate over the next few years.

CJ Muse

Cedar, do you have a follow up question? I do, Joe, thanks. I guess going back to CapEx and I know you don't want to guide today for for next year, but I'm curious if there's a framework in your mind as you balance, you know, meeting customer needs as well as you know your desired, you know, free cash flow goals.

You know, is there anything kind of we should interpret around that to, to help us, you know, as we build our model to think what the appropriate CapEx is within that or or no, you know, if you've got the signed kind of contracts with customers, you're just going to build it.

David Zinsner

I mean, no, we're, we're going to be more thoughtful around it. I, I, I would say just if you look at the straight business and look at, you know, what we think we can do from a cash flow from operations perspective, just you know, the base business, look at what CapEx, even if we step up CapEx investment and the offsets that we get from, from AMIC, you know, our, our cash flow actually looks pretty good.

What, what, what we were likely to have to make investments in the back end as well, particularly with third parties. That could be a drag to, to gross mark or to cash flow next year and make, you know, getting up, getting into a positive number a little bit more challenged. But that said, all of the investment we're making has tremendous ROI.

So I think you know, as long as we feel confident in the growth rate, confident in what we think we can do in terms of pricing and cost structure for those products. And we know that you know, when we make investments in these in these nodes, the lifetime of these nodes is is fairly significant and you know almost always drives a good ROIC will will make the investments.

We're just going to be very careful around making bets ahead of customer commitments. I think that's the most significant change with Lipu is, you know until we really know that we've got the customers, you know, we don't want to put significant amount of capital and you know you can read that now inversely given our confidence around next year that we must have pretty significant confidence in our customers or we wouldn't be putting the P OS in place today. CJ, thank you very much. Jonathan, we've got time for one last question

Operator

certainly. Then our final question for today comes from the line of Aaron Rakers from Wells Fargo. Your question please.

Aaron Rakers

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. I guess the the first questions on the ASIC business, I guess based on what was disclosed last quarter, it's, it's about a 1.2 billion run rate business now growing, growing well for the company. How don't we think about the diversity of that business and just you know you've announced Ford and that I'm just curious of how you're thinking about the growth profile that business and maybe you know also with that you know the margin profile of ASICS as they expand?

Lip Bootan

Yeah, let me start first. I think first of all this is a massive opportunity. I think potentially is over 100 billion ten market and we have unique opportunity to offer beside our advanced design capability using our CPUXPU and also we have a strong IP portfolio and we also have the advanced packaging.

They are very unique in terms of radical integration and also the layer that needed. So they can really drive the leadership and a lot of new technology, AI really need this packaging technology plus our advanced silicon process technology that combine give a lot of opportunity for a lot of purpose build silicon that a lot of company needed.

And so I think one example is recently we announced. With the security ASIC business, with the Fortinet and we're clearly that we really drive the next generation security processor with the higher performance. And of course we all know about the Intel IPO they're providing to some of the hyper scale and that is tremendous opportunity.

So I think I mentioned it's a 3X increasing in terms of year to year growth. So I think it's a great opportunity for that. And then the other part day, if you want to chip in,

David Zinsner

what was the question, growth rates, growth rates of of ASICS. I mean I would say that you know, today we're probably running at about a $2 billion run rate or at least approaching a $2 billion run rate for that business. We think in the not too distant future we'll be at a $4 billion run rate for that business.

So I think that probably gives you a good sense and you know we think that Lipu mentioned the $100 billion Tam, we think we deserve a good chunk of that given our IP portfolio and what we bring to bear. So stay tuned.

Aaron Rakers

Aaron, do you have a quick follow up question? Yeah, I do. Thanks, John. You know, there's a there's a lot of things going on in memory and just memory hierarchy and architecture shifts and stuff. And there's been some recent news about, you know, Intel own development work. I think there's a a technology called Z angle memory, there's a cross batch memory.

So I'm curious, you know, as you strategically look at the role that memory plays in these architectures and scaling compute does, does Intel serve a bigger role in that? Is there is there internal developments and even opportunities in memory over time?

Lip Bootan

Yeah, good question. I think couple of things. First of all, the memory become the big supply constraint challenge and we collaborating with the three big memory vendors that's very important to serve our customers that number one priority. The next thing as you recall Intel have a rich history in the memory and then recently we hired Shokhi Lee to join us. He used to be the CEO of SK Hynek.

And clearly memory it becomes a bottleneck a lot of for AI infrastructure and pinpoint for customer. And we also looking at how are the area that we can integrate compute and the memory and also how the stacking and then how can we use the memory more utilization more efficiently. So I think that's a lot of area we are working on statue and we will work on that. I will keep you guys posted with that.

I think the my closing remark with that I want to thank everyone for joining us today. We make good progress this quarter on our journey to transform Intel, the new Intel, but we still have a lot to do ahead of us and looking forward to see many of you throughout the quarter and provide additional update in October. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference, this does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.

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