Intel shares rose 20% after the publication of the report for the first quarter of 2026

Adjusted earnings per share were $0.29, up from $0.13 a year earlier and well above the $0.01 estimate.

At the same time, the company gave a revenue forecast for the second quarter in the range of 13.8-14.8 billion dollars (the middle of the range is about 14.3 billion), which is significantly higher than the average analyst forecast of 13 billion. This is the sixth quarter in a row in which Intel has exceeded expectations.

After the publication of the report, Intel shares rose almost 20% during after-hours trading. Since the beginning of the year, the securities have gained 81%, ending the session at $66.78. CEO Lip-Bu Tan noted in an interview that customer demand is huge, but the company still faces a shortage of production capacity – which requires a large-scale expansion of the production base.

As the AI ​​industry moves from model training to large-scale inference, Intel’s data center and AI division has emerged as a key division. The division’s revenue in the reported quarter was $5.1 billion, up 22% from a year ago.

Demand for flagship Xeon server processors is significantly outpacing current capacity. Xeon 6 processors based on the Intel 3 process technology and Core processors based on Intel 18A have entered the production ramp-up phase, with a record pace of new product launches for the company over the past five years. Xeon 6s have been selected as host processors for NVIDIA DGX Rubin NVL8 systems, cementing their central role in high-end AI infrastructure.