To The Moon

According to reports, $Intel(INTC)$ is negotiating a partnership with investment banks to weather the most difficult period in the company's 56-year history.At the pre-September board meeting, the company began discussing various scenarios, including a spin-off of its product design and manufacturing business, and canceled factory projects.As a result there was also a rally in the stock price on August 30th.

Let's look at the possible major moves first

1. Split the product design and manufacturing business.

Splitting the product design and manufacturing business may mean that Intel will separate the foundry business and become an independent company.The advantage of doing so is that you can focus on their core business, improve efficiency and competitiveness, but also may bring some challenges, such as the need to re-adjust the supply chain and customer relationships.

2. Reduce capital expenditures and cancel plant projects.

Due to the unexpected big loss last quarter, and the possibility of continued losses, in order to cope with the current difficulties, Intel may cancel some of the ongoing factory projects, used to help the company to save money and focus resources on more promising business.The businesses on the chopping block could include

• A $32 billion plan to build a factory in Germany

• NUC (Next Unit of Computing) minicomputer program

• Blockscale ASIC chip

• RealSense Stereo Camera Project

• Habana Labs' AI chip project

But it also means giving up some future growth opportunities.

3. Layoffs.

The company's first batch of layoffs 15,000 people, before the layoffs, the total number of Intel employees has more than 125,000 people, the total number of employees 10% more than 2020, more than the total number of employees of $NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$ $Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing(TSM)$ combined.

However, Lip-Bu Tan, a core member of Intel's board of directors, announced his resignation.The regulatory filing explains that he is leaving for personal reasons, but investor speculation is that Chen Liwu is very disappointed with the serious big business disease within Intel: people are too busy, unwilling to take risks, unresponsive, and inefficient operations.He wanted Intel to cut more middle management.Disappointed that his opinions were not taken seriously by the board of directors, Lip-Bu Tan finally decided to resign.

4. Impact on shareholders

• First, due to losses, the company stopped paying dividends, which would lower the yield for long-term investors and force them out.

• Second, cutting capital spending may stop the bleeding for a short time, but it will make Intel even less competitive now that AI competition is accelerating.

• In addition, Intel's internal management problems remain unresolved and inefficient, and may require more drastic reforms to implement.