Broadcom has been closely examining Intel’s chip-design and marketing business, according to people familiar with the matter. It has informally discussed with its advisers making a bid but would likely only do so if it finds a partner for Intel’s manufacturing business, the people said.
Nothing has been submitted to Intel, the people cautioned, and Broadcom could decide not to seek a deal.
Separately, TSMC has studied controlling some or all of Intel’s chip plants, potentially as part of an investor consortium or other structure, according to people familiar with the discussions.
↫ Asa Fitch, Lauren Thomas, and Yang Jie at The WSJ
The vultures continue to circle, but considering Intel isn’t actually dead yet, it does all feel a little bit premature. The company needs time to right the ship, but with its current non-technical, finance-oriented leadership it might already be too late for such time to be given to the company. For all we know, they’re already working on a big payday through divestment or wholesale selling of the company, and they’re just waiting on the right offer.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to let Intel be stripped for parts and looted by the ultra-wealthy, but with the United States hurdling towards a massive constitutional crisis and experiencing utter destruction of government institutions, I don’t think anyone’s left to stop it or think things through properly.
If they are going to sell to Broadcom, a better alternative would be to simply sell off all the assets and return cash to shareholders.
TSMC makes a lot more sense but I cannot imagine the current US administration going for that.
This does not strike me as a deal we need to worry about going through.
It is kind of wild that we are (perhaps) in a market bubble and Intel is worth what it was in 1998.
They can’t right the ship. They chose to open their newest facilities in places where the labor is cheap, like rural New Mexico (capitalism 101) – but the problem is, no one wants to live there, most especially the higher performing engineer types. Combine that with the current US admin kicking out all the cheap foreign (mostly Indian) engineers, who basically have no choice but to live in crappy places, and you get a downward spiral from which these companies cannot recover. On top of that, our elites in American despise their workers – they think they are stupid, and just tools to be used and broken. Compare that to the way Chinese leaders talk about their workers – they actually lead! What a strange concept, for an American.
America is done. I don’t know why the media hasn’t caught on yet. But the thing that killed us happened back there, decades ago. We are done. We will not recover. We we not be competitive. It’s over.
To tell the truth, I’m a bit tired of listening to all the “Intel is finished” arguments. The corporation is financially sound (just look at their 10K), their x86 products can be (and are being) made more efficient, and their 18A manufacturing process is almost complete. Also, some of their more recent designs have proven excellent for certain niche markets. The N100 CPU is a great alternative to the Raspberry Pi, for instance, and the Battlemage B580 is an excellent low-cost and low-power GPU.
At this point, for Intel to go back to being a productive company only two things are needed: a decent CEO that will solve its production problems, and a successful launch of its 18A manufacturing lines. Nothing is certain, of course, but I don’t think that either of these is impossible.
The problem with Intel is precisely that it is not worthless. It is a collection of very valuable assets. Unfortunately, it has been poorly managed and, as such, those assets have underperformed. From an investor standpoint, the strong instinct is to sell all those assets now before they lose further value. So, it is not that Intel would have any problem surviving as an independent entity or even if it is possible for it to be successful in the future. The question is if it will be allowed to.
The two most likely scenarios are either that is broken up and sold for parts (as discussed here) or that it is taken private to give it the time to execute on a recovery strategy without the pressures of the market.
Intel is an important company in tech history. It would be great to see it through for that reason alone. If I was contemplating taking the company private (I am quite a few billion short of doing that), one thing to consider is the political climate right now and the potentially tremendous value in simply being a US-based semiconductor designer and manufacturer.