this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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Maybe now they can forget all the expensive chipmaking and get back to their core business of stock buybacks.
That's probably the real reason. He was going to invest all that money instead of doing more stock buybacks. What an idiot!
With the CHIPS Act funding they can't do stock buybacks.
It just frees up other money for buybacks that they would have had to waste on R&D.
This simultaneously made me laugh and sad. Sad because I have heavy investments in Intel.
Well their stock price just jumped up after this announcement.
To less than what it was a month ago.
And more than what it will be next month.
The sentiment was not bad. TSMC is a shining example of how fab subsidies can be a good idea, and Intel's fabs going under is bad and basically irreplaceable. Like... I am still happy with my tax dollars taking the risk, and Intel was clearly trying to right the ship when CHIPS was conceived.
But theres clearly rot in Intel. Thats a big difference I guess, as TSMC was built from the ground up (in a time where that was possible) while Intel is already weighed down with its sins.
Where do you get the 100 billion USD amount from?
AFAIK Intel has received less than $10 billion.
That is simply not true, and Intel has only gotten less than $10 billion from CHIPS.
AFAIK they've actually only received 1 billion of that.
I absolutely do, the company buys it's own stock.
So if the company has a 1000 dollars, and buy for a 1000 dollars shares, it changes nothing for the remaining stockholders.
And the one who sold his stock, just got market value, nothing more nothing less.
The company now has a 1000 dollars less, but there is also for a 1000 dollars less stock. So the inner value per remaining stock remains the same.
Originally when the stock was sold, the money went to the company, when the company buys it back, it's much like paying back a debt. But apart from that, Intel hasn't done any buybacks for more than 3 years.
https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/stock_buyback
Maybe you misunderstood how it works?
Oh please...
This is not about an arbitrary thesis, but about FACTS!
As I've already shown, Intel was ONLY buying back when they actually had profits.
And buying back stock is NOT a gift to stockholders.
The CHIPS thing is a strategic political decision, you originally claimed was many times more than it actually is.
Obviously you are so stuck in your prejudiced opinions based on speculation and false information, that you don't care even when you find you had the facts wrong.
The CHIPS agreement is not a gift, but a 2 way agreement that requires Intel to make heavy investments inside USA, and the money haven't been paid out yet, except for an initial amount that is only a fraction of the total agreement.
It's not like the Biden administration just throws free money at companies as you seem to think.
Now Trump may decide to do just that, because he is corrupt as hell. But that will be another debate.
No I don't generally like share buybacks.
Those are the rules we are working under. If you don't like the rules, that's another debate.
But that would void the entire agreement, making your entire claim nothing but fluff and hot air.
You have no idea who you are talking to. I'm a social democrat from Denmark, except a bit to the left of that. But communism doesn't work, regulated capitalism does.
Many things suck in USA, but CHIPS and helping Intel is a long way away from where the real problems are.
I understand why that may seem like a fair solution on the surface, but it's because that would make Intel a part federally owned company, and in general it is avoided to have publicly owned companies competing against private companies. Which in this case would be Nvidia, AMD, Comcast, Qualcomm etc. It's a huge conflict of interest, and would easily be seen as unfair competition, possibly also by trade partners.
There might also be legal issues, internally in USA, and with WTO and other trade agreements.
So it's kind of opening a can of worms that is better left closed. It's not that I don't understand where you are coming from, but trust me, regulation is way better than a government taking control.
Intel may collapse, but then maybe one of the previously mentioned companies may pick up the remains, and built it better. This is why we need to have free competition.
Intel is just a portion of the CHIPS Act funding and they're the largest fab in the US. Why wouldn't they be included in it when the whole point is to generate more domestic manufacturing rather than "trying to pick winners and losers?" Even TSMC got some of the money, and they're already dominating the market, which arguably makes even less sense to award them taxpayer dollars.
While we're at it, let's go back to 10nm chips too. That's Intel's bread and butter. Phones get bigger every year. Why not transistors too?