Intel Corp Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Joseph Moore - Morgan Stanley & Co Ltd - Analyst : I was really interested in a lot of the prepared remarks around the sort of differences to your approach to foundry, and you talked about this last quarter and this quarter that you're sort of looking for customer commitments before you make the investment. Can you just talk about how those conversations are going? And I certainly -- I can see the trade-off from a customer standpoint; they're making a commitment to you? Do they expect that capacity to be built ahead of time? Just is there a bit of a chicken and egg aspect to these investments? And just how are you approaching those conversations?

Question: Joseph Moore - Morgan Stanley & Co Ltd - Analyst : I do. Yeah. Separately, the supply constraints and server CPUs and other CPUs, we see those in market. I guess, but your growth was 5% sequentially single-digit growth year-on-year. I guess where is the shortage coming from. Is there just better demand ahead that you're not able to meet? Is it some of the transitions that you guys have managed, and I certainly see that tightness in the marketplace. So I'm not arguing with us curious where you see that shortage coming from and how it will get resolved. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. OCTOBER 23, 2025 / 9:00PM, INTC.OQ - Q3 2025 Intel Corp Earnings Call

Question: C.J. Muse - Cantor Fitzgerald LP - Analyst : I guess a follow-up on the current outlook for demand outpacing supply into 2026. Curious if that's a comment largely focused on server or also including clients? And I guess depending on your thoughts there. How should we be thinking about Q1 trends versus normal seasonality, which typically, I guess, would be down high single digits, low double digits.

Question: C.J. Muse - Cantor Fitzgerald LP - Analyst : I do. I guess given the investments from the US government in NVIDIA, et cetera, I'm curious with that improved cash position and liquidity, how has your thinking evolved in terms of investments in either CapEx or other investments in your product businesses. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. OCTOBER 23, 2025 / 9:00PM, INTC.OQ - Q3 2025 Intel Corp Earnings Call

Question: Blayne Curtis - Jefferies LLC - Analyst : Just on the CapEx, I think you reiterated $18 billion, but I think you spent, I guess, less than I was modeling in Q3. So is that really still the number? And I'm just curious, as you start to ramp this 18A and Arizona? Is there a way to think about the timing of when you add capacity there.

Question: Blayne Curtis - Jefferies LLC - Analyst : Just I wanted to follow up on the gross margin trajectory as 18A layers in. I know comparing it to probably the prior couple of nodes, not a great compare but maybe to a successful one. When you say yields are in a good spot and improving. Is there a way to think about where those 18A yields are versus the successful product that you've seen in your history and kind of think about how that layers in the first half? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. OCTOBER 23, 2025 / 9:00PM, INTC.OQ - Q3 2025 Intel Corp Earnings Call

Question: Stacy Rasgon - Sanford C Bernstein & Co LLC - Analyst : I wanted to go back and ask about the supply constraints again. So you talked a lot about how AI was driving a lot of demand across servers and across PCs. But at the same time, it doesn't look like customers want your AI products. In fact, I can't get enough of the older stuff. So I guess -- I mean, you must have plenty of supply for Granite and for media and even for Lunar Lake. So how are you going to get the customers off of the older products where they haven't shown any desire to get off of them so far even given the constraints that they've been under. And I get in about the transition of those tumors because you're clearly -- I mean, you even said it yourself, you're not adding any more of the older capacity. In fact, you took some of it offline, right?

Question: Stacy Rasgon - Sanford C Bernstein & Co LLC - Analyst : Dave, I want to follow up on 2 things that I think I heard you say on 18A. I thought I heard you say -- number one, the yield would not be in a great place, at least until the end of next year. And then I thought I also heard you say that you were not going to be adding a lot of 18A capacity next year. Did I hear those wrong? I mean, how can such the latter one? How can how can that be true if you're ramping Panther, or is that like a --

Question: Joshua Buchalter - Cowen and Company LLC - Analyst : I want to ask about some comments. Lip-Bu made in the prepared remarks about fixed function computing and potentially supporting more ASICs. Was this -- maybe could you provide more context on the scope of this? Is this for potential foundry customers? Or are these products? And if it's products, what types of applications do you expect to be supporting with custom silicon?

Question: Joshua Buchalter - Cowen and Company LLC - Analyst : So on the last quarter, obviously, the disclosure that you might -- may decide to abandon 14A, got a lot of attention. I just wanted to ask, given your balance sheet is in a lot different spot than it was three months ago. Has anything changed from that regard? I don't think the Q is out, so I haven't seen if any of the language change there. But was curious if anything had moved around since last quarter given all the changes in your balance sheet?

Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS AG - Analyst : Dave, it's not that often we see high fixed cost businesses that are constrained that have gross margins less than 40%. And I certainly get that most of this is because of the wafer cost for Intel 10 and 7 and you still have low yields on 18A. But I'm wondering -- and this is probably a hard question to ask to answer, but I wonder if you could maybe just kind of fast forward a bit. And so like what would gross margin be if you were off of 10 and 7 and you were on 18A, is there a way you could like normalize it for us?

Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS AG - Analyst : I do. Yeah. Lip-Bu, you didn't give an update last call on Diamond Rapids launch date. I know the whole road map is under review, but you did found that company sounds fairly optimistic about Coral Rapid, can you just give us sort of an update on the data center road map a bit here?

Question: Aaron Rakers - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Just a couple of real quick ones. I guess going back to the NVIDIA relationship. I can appreciate that the announcement was really tied to the NVLink fusion strategy and integrating that with the x86 ecosystem. But I think there's been some also some recent reports about maybe using Gaudi for some dedicated inference workloads within a stack of NVIDIA. How do you -- is this relationship a starting point? And should we expect to see more potential integration beyond NVLink going forward? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. OCTOBER 23, 2025 / 9:00PM, INTC.OQ - Q3 2025 Intel Corp Earnings Call

Question: Aaron Rakers - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : I do, and I'll make it really short. Can you just update us on how we think about the NCI, the noncontrolling interest expense as we look through this year and think about that, I think you've given some comments in the past of how we should think about that into '26.