Intel stock fell about 29% on Friday, 30 October, in one of the worst single day drops in the company’s history. The fall followed a fourth quarter forecast that came in well below Wall Street expectations, and it closed a week in which investors had already been weighing weaker demand for personal computers. Reports described the drop as Intel’s worst day since the 1970s, with some placing the previous comparable fall in July 1974.
The immediate trigger was guidance, not the quarter Intel had just reported. Revenue for the third quarter reached $16.5 billion, ahead of the company’s own guidance, and adjusted earnings came in at 52 cents a share. Data center and artificial intelligence revenue rose about 78% from a year earlier to $7.3 billion. Those results did little to support Intel stock once investors turned to the outlook for the current quarter.
Intel guided fourth quarter revenue to between $15 billion and $16 billion, with adjusted earnings of 25 cents a share. Analysts had expected revenue of about $17.1 billion and earnings of 43 cents a share, according to LSEG data cited in reporting. The gap, close to $1.5 billion at the midpoint of the revenue range, set off heavy selling in morning trading that continued through the session. Intel stock traders focused on the forecast, not the quarter.
Why Intel stock fell on the forecast
Finance chief David Zinsner linked the outlook to a slowdown in the personal computer market. Rising prices for memory and other components have raised costs across the PC industry, and companies have less room in their information technology budgets for new laptops. Zinsner said in the earnings release, “We see the PC slowdown continuing at least through the first half of next year.” Global PC shipments fell 4% in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to Counterpoint Research figures cited in coverage of the results. Those pressures explain why Intel stock fell so sharply on the day.
Intel’s PC division, which brought in $8.1 billion in the third quarter, is where the forecast gap opens widest. Intel expects revenue from that division to fall more than 20% from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. PC makers are cutting inventory as memory chips grow more expensive and scarcer, and that pullback feeds directly into orders for Intel processors. Server demand, by contrast, remains strong, but manufacturing and packaging limits mean Intel cannot turn every extra server order into an extra shipment at once. For holders of Intel stock, the PC division is now the number to watch.
Intel stock and the Israel plant explosion
A second factor weighed on the forecast. An explosion earlier in October at an Intel fabrication plant in Israel killed two workers and seriously injured a third. Chief executive Lip-Bu Tan described the event as an “unfortunate and tragic accident” that caused an extended shutdown at the plant, delaying shipments of 10-nanometre chips. Intel said the incident would reduce revenue by about $600 million across two quarters, with about $300 million of that amount falling in the fourth quarter.
The plant, at Kiryat Gat, is part of Intel’s manufacturing network for chips built on the 10-nanometre process. An extended shutdown there does more than delay a single product line. It interrupts shipments that customers had planned around, and it leaves Intel with less output to sell into a quarter when PC demand is already soft. Zinsner said the incident accounted for about $300 million within the fourth quarter forecast, leaving most of the gap to Wall Street expectations explained by weaker PC demand. The shutdown alone explains part of the pressure on Intel stock.
What Intel stock did before Friday
The scale of Friday’s fall stood out partly because Intel shares had risen sharply during 2026. Intel started the year at $39.38, according to Yahoo Finance data cited in reporting, and shares had risen about 150% at one point during the year on demand for its central processors. Those processors have gained importance as software that carries out tasks with little human input, often called agentic artificial intelligence, spreads through business computing. Even after Friday’s drop to around $65 to $67, Intel stock remained up about 65% for the year from its starting point.
That context did not soften the reaction. The stock has fallen this hard only twice before in its history, by 29.9% in July 1974 and by 26.1% in August 2024, according to figures cited from Yahoo Finance. A close below about $64.50 would have made Friday the worst day in Intel’s history on a percentage basis.5 basis points on Friday, its biggest one day move since October 2022, according to Markit data cited in reporting.