Intel Reports Results… And Quantum Leaps As U.S. Eyes Next Equity Stake 10/23/25

0:01Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square this is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Another big round of earnings. Shares of Intel, Ford and more all on the move after their latest results. We'll dive into the details behind the action in these stocks and the next U.S. investment. Quantum stocks surging even as the White House denies reports it's looking to take a stake in the industry. But what other groups could the administration look at and what will it mean for markets and the economy? Plus, Tesla claws back from deep in the red. Crude oil surges in its best day since June and a super slump for Super Micro, why the chipmaker didn't come along for the ride today.

0:36I'm Melissa Lee. Come to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ on the desk tonight. Tim Seymour, Karen Feinerman, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. We start off with the Intel popping in its first earnings report since getting an investment from the U.S. government. The chipmaker reporting adjusted third quarter earnings 23 cents a share revenues topping Wall Street estimates. The conference call just getting underway, but Christina Parts Nevelis is here on set with details, and you just spoke to the CFO as well. Yeah, so that revenue beat really driven by products like AIPCs, though the foundry revenue who did fall a little bit short.

1:03I caught up, like you said, with the CFO, Dave Zisner, in just the last hour. And he said Intel is burning through inventory because the data center refresh is actually happening, quote, faster than anticipated. So he's saying that supply could be constrained in Q1, quote, probably Q2, maybe even Q3, as companies really race to update their Windows operating system. So that was a very bullish comment. Shares talked about have jumped 85 percent this year, nearly all since August, when the U.S. government converted billions of a grant into a 10 % stake into Intel. Zizner said they are shoring up cash with this United States government injection and partial Altera sale that happened in mid-September.

1:44And then once NVIDIA pays their promised amount of$5 billion, they could have roughly$35 billion in cash. And with the United States government as Intel's biggest shareholder, I asked if they, you know, brief the government. How does it work? Zizner said no briefings on numbers before earnings, but, quote, we talk to them like any big shareholder. And he even gave Fidelity as an example. He added they're also making progress on advanced processes like the 14A, but won't add supply until they have, quote, real firm demand on the earnings call. They're not going to be making any customer announcements either.

2:18And so all of that you can see is just a bullish commentary this time around coming from management. Any update on their most recent architecture, the 18A and whether or not that's going to Panther Lake? So Panther Lake, I asked specifically, is Microsoft going to sign on? Because that was a rumor. And he said that that was still just a rumor. And it's still going to remain internal to your question. Okay. Well, why do you think everything, it seemed like demand turned on a dime. Like all of a sudden, everybody wants to refresh. Everybody wants to, you know, upgrade to new operating system. But Qualcomm has been saying that as well.

2:50If we talk about the PC and on the edge perspective, and we've seen for counterpoint research, I think, just within the last 24 hours, the laptop sales have gone much stronger. So I think maybe it's finally starting to catch on that everybody wants to have the latest and greatest with the AI systems as well as Windows 10, which was launched. So they're finally seeing the, it's just, like you said, it's amazing it's happening all of a sudden right now, right? Right when he gets a big cash, he, the Intel company, gets a cash injection. Well, so, and how does this affect how we should be thinking about their rethinking of Foundry?

3:21So, you know, suddenly this is now, you know, the understanding is that Foundry really is the answer to margin accretion and ultimately a place where this company needs to compete and really be U.S. semiconductor LTD. What do we think about that? Are we getting any signs from the company? Because the strategic plan has been everything's been put on the table. It seems like they flattened out the organization, but that rethinking Foundry seems to be the number one thing. Well, one of the questions I asked is next week, NVIDIA is hosting a GTC event in D.C., and NVIDIA did make an announcement of spending$5 billion and working with Intel and data centers as well as PC chips.

3:54But I said, are you going to make another announcement about the foundry business now that NVIDIA is on board? And he said no. So to answer that question, they're still working through all their troubles. The foundry business actually declined 2 percent. It fell short of estimates. So it's still an issue. It's still not profitable. I don't know what that means going forward other than the United States government is supporting them. So it's not like they're going to close the foundry business down under Trump's watch. Christina, thank you. Keep us posted on the conference call. Again, we're just about four minutes into the conference call at this point.

4:24The question going in here is the stocks run and the valuation of the stock. I mean, the AI business was like up a couple percent or something like that. And when you think about the demand that they're talking about when it comes to PCs and refresh, I mean, half their sales almost is HP, Dell and Lenovo. So if you're talking about laptops and PCs that need on-the-device AI, Apple doesn't have on-the-device AI. They're just going through this upgrade. So what I'm saying is I'm not sure PCs need that. These are not high-margin products as it is. Do you know what I mean? They have long lead times, that sort of thing.

4:57Why wouldn't you wait if you're a company to upgrade your hardware when you have some of the software that is really compatible? Because we haven't seen uptake of co-pilots just yet. That's what Microsoft's been telling us over the last few quarters. So we talked about, I think collectively we thought this was an interesting stock around$19,$20. That proved to be the case. I think we thought it could get to$36 and then fail. That's where we broke down from in July of last year. Well, obviously it's through it. Now fundamentals, I think, start to matter. Quarter was fine on the EPS front, revenue.

5:28But revenue is only up 3 % year over year, which is not a staggering number. And the full-year guide, given what Christina just talked about, was not particularly robust. So, listen, great for them, but valuation is going to start to matter in a meaningful way. For a company of$40, it's probably trading, I don't know, in terms of price to earnings. I mean, it's got to be approaching 45, 50 times. Well, if you just annualize this quarter's number, and maybe that's fair, maybe it's not. They're going to lose money next quarter. So you're right. Sorry. So the part where it was sort of an option, where there's a lot of debt and not a ton of equity, that's sort of long gone.

6:03I missed that. I think you guys maybe were on that, but I was not. But now it's just, I mean, good for them. They start to, it seems like they're really making some progress in what is a difficult endeavor. So still, I just can't get on board. I'd rather, you know, self-would you rather there. I do have some Dell exposure. You're talking about Dell. You would think that this should be good for Dell. It's only up a little bit. So I kind of feel like this one, I've just missed the boat here. And to get, I could guarantee you that if I bought it tomorrow, it would go down. Well, Wedbush had a note out yesterday saying that the valuation is unsustainably high and said the EB to sales ratio right now.

6:40You haven't seen this since late 2023 and back then in 2023. Their revenues, their gross margins, what they were. That's already the estimate for 2027 and 2028. So you're really trading on, you know, what people are forecasting for years out at this point. And that's what it's trading at right now. Where was the foundry on that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't think that foundry was the drag that it is today. And what's interesting about an EB to sales is what's truly debt that they're taking on? What's truly strategic investment? What's truly equity? What's truly subsidy? Because at one point, that government money was not debt, and it wasn't equity.

7:21And now it's equity and good for the government for making some money here. But that's what's fascinating because, again, we know Intel has a lot of debt. We know they've been burned through a lot of cash. But when I hear about SoftBank and I hear about NVIDIA, I'm not necessarily hearing about debt. I'm hearing about investment. And Nathan was just pointing to his computer. He had a chart up. And what he's looking at is the downtrend that's been in place now since December. There's a reason why Dan's not telling us about this chart. I know. I'm like, Dan is sitting right here. Because he pointed it.

7:50Because he did this thing, which means he didn't want to say anything. You've got to bring him out of his shell, Missy. Get him out of his shell. Speak, Dan. He's in my head. No, no, no. Go ahead, please. Downtrend that's been in place now for four years. We have just made the third price point of that downtrend line that I think is intact. To the penny. To the penny. As our friend Carter Braxton-Workers said. At the same time, we have been seeing a little pickup in semiconductors. Yesterday we had a downdraft kind of a day, but today there's a little bit of catch-up here. Intel could help support that story, but we also got this report from the Korea Economic Daily reporting that its two main chipmakers, Samsung and SK Hynix, We're going to raise the prices of DRAM as well as NAND Flash by about 30 percent in the fourth quarter so that there is strong demand there.

8:32And that while Citi and Morgan Stanley and, you know, big banks were expecting a pickup in pricing, that these major players are already putting that into place right now. I think a lot of U.S. investors are underinvested in Samsung because they don't know where they can buy it. Now, it is in some ETFs. It's in some global ETFs. This is the largest memory chip maker in the world and I think one of the most important tech companies in the world. So it's great to hear the demand there because that's not something we've heard. And that gets us back to the total cyclicality of the sector. The cycle looks pretty solid.

9:01Yeah. Look at Sandus. SNDK pulled that one up. I mean, it's up 14 % today. It's trading a new all-time high. You're seeing Western Digital, Seagate. These are obviously all in the storage space. Micron has been trading really well. So they've gotten to these other components. I think, you know, it was pretty easy to focus on the hyperscalers and NVIDIA a few years ago. And now you have to kind of think a bit broader about who is exposed to this trade. Yeah. Guy. We're going to hear from Western Digital, I think, on the 30th, so it's next Thursday. I mean, the valuation is not ridiculous, but highly cyclical.

9:30Do you buy these companies when they're cheap? Historically, that's the wrong time to buy them. Meantime, let's get to two of last night's big earnings movers, because they staged some pretty major reversals during the trading day today. IBM, for instance, down more than 8 % at the open after saying hybrid cloud revenue grew less than expected in its latest quarter, but it closed well off the lows, down less than a percent. Tesla, same, down nearly 6 % early trade. the EV maker missing profit estimates last night, but shares rallied into the green, into the close, up more than 2 percent. So, Guy, you're flagging this.

10:00I mean, does this say anything about the broader markets, just about these two stories in particular? Well, there's a resilience to the broader market 100 percent, but it's the stories themselves. I mean, IBM, as we talked, we talked, I think we surrounded the trade pretty well last night in IBM. And I think collectively we thought, you know, the quarter was, to me, it was not commensurate with the move lower. I thought it didn't make a lot of sense. And this actually, 285, makes sense. I actually think they're operating really well. I think you can continue to own IBM here. Can we talk Tesla for a second?

10:27I mean, so, you know, a lot about Elon getting on the conference call and making his pitch. And I don't know if there was any bit of people thinking, all right, he's going to be successful in getting what he wants. I'm not really sure if that is part of it because I still, I mean, I've always thought this all along. I can't get remotely close to where it is right now. Now, when you look at some of the other auto companies, and I know this is not an auto company, that valuation differential is so huge. I know we'll get to Ford later. Yeah. I mean, I think the bull argument today that people were sort of rethinking was the notion that Musk yesterday said, effectively, RoboTaxi, Optimus, all of that stuff that makes up most of the market cap of Tesla at this point, that's on track, at least.

11:12So on track is not bad when you're thinking about the sort of sky-high projections that Elon Musk usually has. But he's never on track, even when he says he's always on track. Right? I mean, he's been on, off, I mean, he is so confident about full self-driving today. Today, 2025, when we've been hearing about this for, I don't know, how many years? It's version 19. And by the way, 12 % of their owners here in the U.S. actually have full self-driving. All their competitors around the world are basically giving it away for free. BYD has cars half the price of their low end, and they're giving it away for free.

11:44So if that's but your point, Mel, is at one and a half trillion dollars is not what people are buying this business for, if you think about it. So what did they sell? They're going to sell one point seven million cars this year is down a few hundred grand from a few years ago. I mean, the business is not doing particularly well. So to justify this thing, you got to believe in robots and robo taxi and sci fi stuff. Last night was the Tug McGraw special. And for you Mets fans out there, I know you are. You got to believe you got to believe in that. I mean, you got to believe in a lot. And I feel as if if we had to believe in EV and the Tesla delivery story, that when it was an auto company.

12:19Remember, it wasn't always an auto company. It really was an EV company where there was no competition. That was right. But there's now competition. Why isn't there competition in all these other places? That to me, if you believe that because they have so many cars on the road, because the data is not going to be something people can catch up to, I get it. But what we've seen, at least with the hardware, is that people have caught up. There's a lot of competitors out there, so it's not cheap. I don't know why you'd be buying the dream now when, if anything, it looks as if the dream keeps getting pushed out.

12:47That's my tug. Meantime, the SIBO volatility index down today ending at its lowest in nearly two weeks, but problems may still lurk under the surface. Manny Hsu is the head of derivatives market intelligence for SIBO global markets. Manny, it's always great to see you. Great to be here. We've been remarking about sort of the, you know, on the surface, everything looks calm on the, you know, index level. But then individual stocks seem to have crazy moves. And you actually note that the volatility in individual stocks is much higher than the index level. Exactly. So I think everyone looks at the VIX index as a measure of kind of broad market volatility.

13:18We also have an index for single stock volatility, VIX EQ. And if you look at the difference between VIX EQ and VIX, which tells you how much additional volatility is being priced into the single names, that recently hit an all-time high. Now, that spread typically widens going into earnings because earnings is a driver of single stock moves. But the extent of that, you know, widening of that spread widening we thought was very notable. And I think it kind of speaks to this anxiety around earnings and valuation around some of the high flyer AI stocks and the tech names that we've seen so far this year.

13:53You point out that the dispersion is market stocks like Apple and Amazon. I mean, is there anything so the so the anxiety surrounding the earnings for those particular stocks are much higher? So the measure is market cap weighted. So it is much more driven by the large cap stocks, as, of course, is the S &P. But to a point of the dispersion, that is definitely a theme that we've seen this year, where you get a lot of volatility at the single stock level. But because they're all uncorrelated on any given day, certain sectors ups, certain sectors are down. As a result, the index level volatility gets very muted.

14:28Is there anything in that that is some of the meme stocks, which just have extraordinary volatility, even though they might not be that big? Yeah, so that is not reflected into the VIX EQ. So the VIX EQ, I would say the index, you can think about it as the top 80 to 90 stocks in the S &P by market cap. So stocks like, you know, Open Door or maybe some of the other meme stocks, you know, that are out there, those volatilities would not be reflected into this index. Mandy, on October 16th, the VIX, I think, put a 28 at one point, closed around 25. That was on a down day, but not a historically bad down day.

15:01And again, I think yesterday or the last couple of days, We've seen the VIX spike. Something's going on below the surface. Exactly. So we've seen pretty meaningful shifts in terms of the positioning in the options market. I would say over the past, especially over the past week, we've definitely noticed a pickup in hedging demand. So investors actually buying downside protection, particularly going out to year end, kind of locking their year-to-date gains, kind of looking out ahead and seeing kind of the risks out there and the positive performance in stocks, and looking at the levels of volatility, like maybe this is a good time to start hedging.

15:31So we've definitely noticed that shift in investor sentiment and positioning. Mandy, how about correlation between the bond market and the equity market? So it really feels as if the Treasury market's calmed down quite a lot. And it's calmed down in a bullish tint. In other words, yields are going lower, but it's relatively orderly. It does seem to be, for good reasons, not bad. What is that? Does that – has that had anything to do with either equity side vol here, or does it bode well for something we should be looking for? Yeah, I think what's going on in the fixed income market is very notable.

15:59Not only have yields come down, as you mentioned, but yields have come down at the same time inflation expectations are actually rising. So what the bond market is telling you is that the Fed is going to completely ignore any inflation risk and really focus on the softening in the labor market. And the market's getting very excited about this easing in policy. So real rates have collapsed this year. And that's what assets, cross assets, you know, trade on. And this loosening of financial conditions, which has been happening all year, even before the Fed started resuming cuts, that's been kind of underpinning a lot of the positive performance we've seen across asset classes.

16:32Manny, when you think about like a lot of volatility we see in markets has to do with a lot of data. We don't have a lot of the data. There's still, you know, trade stuff to be worked out here. We're going through earnings season. We have a Fed that's about to cut interest rates next week. I look out one month in the SPY, okay, so the ETF that tracks the S &P 500. I see options pricing a 3 % move in either direction. So if you want to buy an at-the-money call or an at-the-money put, But it costs you 1.5 % of the index or the ETF to make that bet. Just talk to us about where that stands, the way you think about it.

17:01I know you've been looking at markets like this for a long time. It just seems kind of cheap, doesn't it? Yeah, so I think the low levels of volatility, index vol, which we talked about, it means that the absolute premium for options, whether to the upside or downside, is going to be low. So I think that's why we've seen an uptick in option activity, is people using those low levels to really express their views, whether bearish or bullish. You talk about one month out or three months out. If you look at VIX one day index, which looks at the next 24 hours. So we have CPI coming tomorrow. It's around like I think 80 basis points being priced in for tomorrow, which is really nothing.

17:37So not a lot being priced in for macro data, not really a lot being priced in in the horizon. And I think a lot of investors are taking a look at this situation and saying, actually, maybe this is a good time to hedge. Mandy, always great to see you. Thank you so much. Manishu, SIBO. Are you in that camp? Take a look at the situation. Maybe now is a good time to hedge. Well, that's, I mean, yes, yes. I love hedging. I mean, the VIX is a little elevated, but I do, for 80 basis points tomorrow, that actually seems, I'm not in the one day option game. But yes, I generally like to buy when premiums low.

18:13Meantime, we got an earnings alert on Ford. The automaker turning higher after top and bottom line beats. Phil LeBeau has been all over the conference call. He joins us now with the very latest. Hey, Phil. Hey, Melissa, when you look at Ford, this was a quarter that people expected after seeing the GM results. They said, well, if it was that good for GM, is it going to be as good for Ford? Look at what they did. Buck 45 a share, nine cents better than the street was expecting. Revenue way above expectations, four billion dollars above expectations. Q3 margin, 5.1 percent compared to 5.5 percent last year.

18:45That's the impact of tariff costs. And then there's the question of the Novellis aluminum shortage. What's the impact of that? Remember, that's the supplier in upstate New York where there was a fire at the aluminum plant. This plant supplies aluminum for the F-series trucks. It's going to be about$1.5 to$2 billion. And it also raises the question, well, is it going to hit F-series sales? And if so, to what extent? Ford today is saying, look, we have the inventory, so near term there's not going to be an impact. But what we're going to have to do is we're going to be increasing our production over time.

19:19So Ford will be adding 50 ,000 vehicles to its already existing production plan for F-Series trucks, adding 1 ,000 jobs, increasing production time at the F-Series plants in Kentucky and in Michigan. And again, Ford says it already has the inventory in place for existing sales. So as you take a look at Ford, a couple other things to keep in mind. shares of Ford initially went down, but now moving higher after hours. The EBIT guide of six to six and a half billion, only a half billion below where the company's previous guidance was for full year profitability. So that's the impact of the Novellas fire.

19:58And then their tariff costs, it's only going to be about a billion dollars. Remember earlier this year, they were saying it would be closer to two, two and a half billion dollars, but they've been able to mitigate those impacts. They already have the most production here in the United States of any of the automakers. And we also got the news from the White House last week that it's going to be extending offsets for auto parts that are being imported. So that is a cost win for not only Ford, but all of the automakers as they manufacture here in the U.S. Melissa. All right, Phil, thank you. Phil LeBeau.

20:31We got GM earnings, which were good when the stock reaction is very positive. We did a would you rather. But now having the four results, I pose the same question because maybe that maybe it is different now. GM or Ford. I'll still go the GM route. I think it's just I think it's a better company. I mean, the Ford guidance, there's some things to be concerned about, I think. And listen, Ford has been to say we've talked about it. You go back 40 years. It's trading wherever it's trading right now is where it was trading 40 or so years ago. So we've seen this before. GM on your hand seems to have things figured out.

21:01I love GM. I have a position in Ford, but I love GM. And we saw on the margin where GM continues. I continue to think the market is slowly giving them credit for their operational improvements in the margin efficiencies. The company's never been run better. They're handling the things they can handle. It's also interesting to hear both Farley and Mary Barra talk about how they think EV is, in terms of the size of the market right now, they're like, relax. It's not you know, they're almost talking back up the original internal combustion engine story, even though I know we'd like to see otherwise.

21:33Coming up, Supermicro sliding why the stock is sitting out today's semi rebound and whether it's a one off or sign of deeper troubles. Plus, a big bounce in crude as the White House announces Russia sanctions, how the geopolitical pressure could impact oil as we head into the end of the year. Don't go anywhere. Fast money's back in two.