Intel to slash workforce by year-end as it forecasts steeper losses than expected
(Reuters) -Intel said on Thursday it plans to slash its headcount to 75,000 by the end of this year, down from 99,500 at the end of 2024 and laid out a blueprint of a more streamlined chip manufacturer.
Shares of Intel jumped roughly 2% in extended trading.
The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker disclosed the layoff goals as it forecast steeper third-quarter losses than Wall Street estimates on Thursday, despite anticipating higher sales than analysts expected while new CEO Lip-Bu Tan steers the company through a historic turnaround.
In a memo to employees, Tan said that Intel is changing its strategy for building manufacturing capacity and now plans to build factories only when the demand for its chips is there. Previously, the company had built factories ahead of demand.
Tan wrote that Intel will continue to slow down construction work on new factories in Ohio and has decided to not to move forward with planned factories in Poland and Germany. He also said the company would consolidate chip packaging operations in Costa Rica with its other packaging operations in Vietnam and Malaysia, breaking with a longtime Intel practice of maintaining operations in separate global regions for supply-chain resiliency.
The outlook comes as investors pushed Intel's shares up 14% this year, in the hopes of Tan undoing years of strategic mistakes that have exempted the company from the AI boom dominated by Nvidia.
Intel conducted the layoffs in early July, and the cuts amount to roughly 15% of its staff at the end of June. The remainder of the cuts to bring the headcount to 75,000 will be through attrition and "other means," according to the company.
The company said it expects a third-quarter loss of 24 cents per share, steeper than estimates of losses of 18 cents per share, according to data from LSEG.
Intel expects revenue of $12.6 billion to $13.6 billion for the September quarter, with a midpoint of $13.1 billion that was higher than analysts' average estimate of $12.65 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Growth in the PC market is uncertain after customers pulled shipments forward to the first half of the year amid ongoing trade negotiations, analysts have said. Shipments of PCs rose 6.5% in the June quarter according to data from International Data Corporation.
While semiconductors are currently exempt from U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs, Intel and its fellow chipmakers are facing customers who are reluctant about spending commitments amid widespread macroeconomic uncertainty.
Intel's second-quarter revenue for the period ended June 28 was flat at $12.9 billion, snapping a four-quarter streak of sales declines. The result beat estimates of $11.92 billion, according to LSEG data.
CEO Tan has been focusing on a next-generation chipmaking process called 14A to win big external customers, shifting away from 18A, a technology that his predecessor Pat Gelsinger had spent billions of dollars to develop, Reuters has reported.
Tan has also focused on streamlining the organization and reducing its workforce. In April, Intel agreed to sell a 51% stake in its Altera programmable chip business for $4.46 billion.
Intel said job cuts contributed to restructuring costs of $1.9 billion in the second quarter.
It recorded June quarter adjusted losses of 10 cents per share, compared with estimates of a profit of 1 cent per share. Its unadjusted loss was 67 cents per share in the second quarter, steeper than analyst estimates of a 26-cent-per-share loss.
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