Major Wall Street firm makes a bold new call on Intel stock

Wall Street loves a comeback story, but it does not always trust one.

Intel has been a graveyard for investor patience for most of the past decade. The chipmaker missed the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, lost ground to Taiwan Semiconductor and Nvidia, and burned through billions trying to fix a foundry business that few outside customers wanted to touch.

Then, in early 2025, the board handed the keys to Lip-Bu Tan, a chip-industry veteran with a reputation for tough calls.

Server CPU demand has roared back. The stock has more than tripled off last year's lows on a wave of AI optimism, foundry milestones, and a fresh round of analyst upgrades.

That brings us to a small but loud detail buried in this week's post-earnings coverage. One of the largest banks on Wall Street just bumped its Intel price target by 28% in a single note, the kind of leap that usually signals a full conversion to bull. Yet the same firm still won't tell clients to buy.

UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri raised his price target on Intel to $83 from $65 on April 24 and kept his Neutral rating, according to TipRanks. The gap between the math and the call is the whole story for anyone holding this stock.

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What UBS just told Intel investors

Arcuri has been one of the most patient skeptics on Intel for years. As recently as August 2025, he kept his price target at just $25, arguing the chipmaker's earnings power was too thin to support any rerating, according to Yahoo Finance.

That number is now $83.

The latest revision came in a research note on April 24, the day after Intel reported what one industry tracker called its most consequential earnings beat in years. UBS said it had updated its model following the Q1 print but kept its Neutral call in place, according to TipRanks.

Related: The analyst who called Intel's 100% run just reset his forecast

Here is the kicker. Intel closed at an all-time high of $82.54 on the same day, according to Macrotrends. UBS's "raised" target is essentially the current price.

I have been watching that disconnect closely, and my read is that it captures something important about where Intel sits today. The numbers have improved faster than the underlying belief.

Why Intel's blowout quarter changed the math

Intel's first-quarter 2026 earnings report, released April 23, was the kind of print that resets a story.

The chipmaker posted revenue of $13.6 billion, up 7% year over year and roughly $1.3 billion above the Wall Street consensus, according to CNBC.

Adjusted earnings per share landed at 29 cents. Analysts had been looking for one cent.

Demand was so strong across the business that CFO David Zinsner told investors revenue would have been "meaningfully higher" if the company could have manufactured enough chips.

Asked by Arcuri on the call to quantify the gap between demand and supply, Zinsner declined to put a number on it but said it "starts with a B," according to the Motley Fool earnings transcript. Billions, in plain English.

Tan, marking his one-year anniversary as chief executive, framed the quarter as proof of a deeper shift in computing.

"The CPU is reinserting itself as the indispensable foundation of the AI era. This isn't just our wishful thinking, it's what we hear from our customers," Tan said on the company's earnings call, according to CNBC.

Other Wall Street firms moved fast. Here is how the post-earnings analyst action stacked up:

• Citi upgraded Intel to Buy and lifted its target to $95 from $48.
• Wedbush analyst Dan Ives raised his target to $95 from $65 and added Intel to the firm's "Best Ideas" list.
• Truist took its target to $81 from $49 and stayed at Hold.
• HSBC flipped to Buy and roughly doubled its target to $95.
• Stifel lifted its target to $75 from $65 and held its Hold rating.
  
  Sources: TipRanks, Tech-Insider.org, and Timothy Sykes.

Where Intel still gets a hard look

Even with the better numbers, the bear case has not disappeared.

Intel is still losing money on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis. Free cash flow remains negative. Intel Foundry, the segment that's supposed to make the company a true rival to TSMC, is not yet profitable.

The Intel 18A process node, the company's first angstrom-class manufacturing technology, has only just entered high-volume production. Yields and external customer commitments will determine whether it earns the kind of long-term contracts that justify a higher multiple.

That is part of why UBS, even at $83, sits on the fence. Arcuri's prior framing was that Intel's downside was protected by tangible book value while upside was capped by limited earnings power, according to Investing.com.

The Q1 print stretches the upside band but doesn't change the structural questions.

Then there's valuation. Intel's market capitalization sat near $417 billion this week, with a forward price-to-earnings ratio above 120, according to CNBC. That is a number that demands flawless execution.

When I ran my own back-of-the-envelope on Intel's last twelve months of operating earnings, the stock is essentially pricing in a multi-year ramp where Foundry turns profitable, AI-driven CPU demand stays elevated, and 18A wins external customers well beyond the recent Google and Tesla-linked deals.

What Intel's results mean for your portfolio

The honest takeaway is messier than the headlines suggest.

If you bought Intel at $20 last August on a turnaround thesis, you have already won. The harder question is whether the next leg requires a different set of bets.

UBS's $83 target says the stock can hold its current ground on the strength of CPU pricing, server demand, and Foundry milestones. The Neutral rating says the math still needs to catch up to the multiple before Wall Street can call it a clean buy.

Watch three things from here. The pace of the 18A ramp through the back half of 2026, since that is where Foundry economics turn. New foundry customer announcements, since Tan hinted on the earnings call that more contracts are signed but unannounced. And gross margins in the second-quarter print, since management has said expanding them is "the top priority," according to Intel's prepared remarks.

Bulls and skeptics agree on one thing. Intel is finally relevant again. Whether it stays that way long enough to justify a $400 billion-plus valuation is the bet you are making every day you hold the stock.

Related: Bank of America resets Intel stock price target after earnings

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This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 4:03 PM.