Intel Initiates $10 Billion Accelerated Share Repurchase Agreements

[btarunr]

Intel Corporation today announced it is entering into accelerated share repurchase (ASR) agreements to repurchase an aggregate of $10 billion of Intel's common stock. Following completion of these agreements, Intel will have repurchased a total of approximately $17.6 billion in shares as part of the planned $20 billion share repurchases announced in October 2019.

"We achieved record financial results in the first half of 2020 and raised our full-year outlook as customers rely on Intel technology for delivering critical services and enabling people to work, learn and stay connected. As the ongoing growth of data fuels demand for Intel products to process, move and store, we are confident in our multiyear plan to deliver leadership products," said Intel CEO Bob Swan. "While the macro-economic environment remains uncertain, Intel shares are currently trading well below our intrinsic valuation, and we believe these repurchases are prudent at this time."

Under the terms of the ASR agreements, Intel will receive an initial share delivery of approximately 166 million shares, with the final settlement scheduled to occur by the end of 2020. The final number of shares to be repurchased by Intel will be based on the volume-weighted average stock price of Intel's common stock during the term of the agreements, less a discount and subject to adjustments.

Intel is funding the share repurchases under the ASR agreements with existing cash resources. Strong operating results in the first half of 2020 have contributed to a healthy liquidity balance, which gives Intel the ability to invest in the business during a period of economic uncertainty while also returning capital to stockholders through dividends and these share repurchases. Intel intends to complete the $2.4 billion balance of its planned $20 billion share repurchases and return to its historical capital return practices when markets stabilize.

BNP Paribas Securities Corp. acted as sole structuring adviser to Intel on the ASR agreements.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[mtcn77]

INB4, "ntel" hits the edit button.

 

[Caring1]

INB4, "ntel" hits the edit button.

I'm not sure if ntel is better than Ktel, if they start appearing on the Home Shopping channel .......

 

[JustAnEngineer]

Stock repurchases are a sign of company leadership with a short-term view that has no vision of anything productive to do with the company's money to grow or maintain its business.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Stock repurchases are a sign of company leadership with a short-term view that has no vision of anything productive to do with the company's money to grow or maintain its business.

I thought was exactly the opposite? Maybe they know they have something big coming up so they want to re-purchase the shares while are still low(ish) ?
Maybe I'm wrong....

 

[mtcn77]

Stock repurchases are a sign of company leadership with a short-term view that has no vision of anything productive to do with the company's money to grow or maintain its business.

INB4 the leveraged buyout. "Barbarians at the Gate" is such a cool movie.

 

[JustAnEngineer]

In the past three years, TSMC spent a few billion dollars on Twinscan NXE 3400B EUV lithography machines to develop and commercialize smaller, faster and more efficient process nodes. Intel is still relying on ye olde 14 nm for the bulk of its production.

$2,400,000,000 could have purchased twenty of those cutting-edge EUV systems.

 

[Frick]

In the past three years, TSMC spent a few billion dollars on Twinscan NXE 3400B EUV lithography machines to develop and commercialize smaller, faster and more efficient process nodes. Intel is still relying on ye olde 14 nm for the bulk of its production.

$2,400,000,000 could have purchased twenty of those cutting-edge EUV systems.

They did order 15 of those machines from ASML in 2015. It's not like they have been scratching themselves while idling in front their old machines for all this time. Their technical troubles have been, and possibly still are, quite deep.

 

[Deleted member 181753]

Like i said Intel or better said "ntel" without the "I" will do anything to cover the big disaster in order to buy time and fool the shareholders and it's investors..
buy shares back, flood the weak minds with a lot of paper launches and different products, divert attention from implosion all these are the best strategies from the same people from ntel, the same people that thought that the world is good enough with 2 cores cpu's since most humans have 2 heads as well and most of them think with the 2 one, except this time the stretching is at the most level and the snap will occur soon.
be ready for the lowest ntel shares stocks in the history, and ntel takeover by some else..

 

[XiGMAKiD]

I wonder if this means ntel have some interesting surprise for the future

 

[Tom Yum]

I thought was exactly the opposite? Maybe they know they have something big coming up so they want to re-purchase the shares while are still low(ish) ?
Maybe I'm wrong....

It can go both ways. If the company is genuinely undervalued then it can make sense as it provides a return on investment should the share price return to 'fair value'. The question Intel needs to answer is whether this $10 billion could generate better growth if invested elsewhere (ie. R&D), and would that return exceed the return from share buybacks. Often, companies do share buybacks because the leadership team have performance indicators attached to share price growth, and buying shares is the easiest way of doing that (especially if they have no idea or plan to grow share price any other way ie growing the business). In that case it represents very short term thinking, as buying shares will not help the company grow in the future, but it can make sense if the company is significantly undervalued.

 

[TheLostSwede]

They did order 15 of those machines from ASML in 2015. It's not like they have been scratching themselves while idling in front their old machines for all this time. Their technical troubles have been, and possibly still are, quite deep.

No amount of fancy machines are going to help, when the underlying processes is flawed. This is why they've been struggling with 10nm.

 

[londiste]

No amount of fancy machines are going to help, when the underlying processes is flawed. This is why they've been struggling with 10nm.

Large part of initial troubles were that they were not using EUV. That was past 2015 but the machines really did not get delivered until later either. The later - and possibly current - issues are something else though.

The question Intel needs to answer is whether this $10 billion could generate better growth if invested elsewhere (ie. R&D), and would that return exceed the return from share buybacks.

Intel is still putting large amounts of money into R&D. Pretty sure that additional $10 billion would not make a noticeable difference, at least not noticeable enough.

 

[Octopuss]

Does anyone understand what this economical klingon means?

 

[Zareek]

It can go both ways. If the company is genuinely undervalued then it can make sense as it provides a return on investment should the share price return to 'fair value'. The question Intel needs to answer is whether this $10 billion could generate better growth if invested elsewhere (ie. R&D), and would that return exceed the return from share buybacks. Often, companies do share buybacks because the leadership team have performance indicators attached to share price growth, and buying shares is the easiest way of doing that (especially if they have no idea or plan to grow share price any other way ie growing the business). In that case it represents very short term thinking, as buying shares will not help the company grow in the future, but it can make sense if the company is significantly undervalued.

100% correct, this is a move to protect their stock value and a bit of a gamble because they can sell the stock and make a chunk of money when the stock bounces back. The volume of these transactions will create a façade that investors are interested in the stock. It will also more than likely fluff up the stock price as someone(Intel) is willing to pay for the stock. If they started turning the wheels on this back in October of last year, they knew then, things were going badly and might get much worse!

 

[InVasMani]

It would be interesting if they did this because they intended to buy ARM out from underneath Nvidia and know their stock value gonna climb because of it. Then again I'm not sure Intel would be allowed by purchase ARM in the first place it's iffy enough that Nvidia would be.

 

[mtcn77]

It would be interesting if they did this because they intended to buy ARM out from underneath Nvidia and know their stock value gonna climb because of it.

I agree. This is just the thing I thought. Buy cheap, sell high. Although I doubt this would be a publicly traded company sort of thing to do. It would be stock manipulation, imo.

 

[Imsochobo]

I thought was exactly the opposite? Maybe they know they have something big coming up so they want to re-purchase the shares while are still low(ish) ?
Maybe I'm wrong....

it can be, and it can be they want more control themselves.
if you have fewer investors to answer to you can spend money more as you desire.

 

[JustAnEngineer]

We've got $2,400,000,000 in cash sitting here. Should we...
1) Buy a complementary business to grow our company, thereby increasing profit now and in future years?
2) Upgrade our manufacturing capability to increase sales volumes and revenue, thereby increasing profit now and in future years?
3) Upgrade our infrastructure to make make us more efficient and reduce costs, thereby increasing profit now and in future years?
4) Sit on the cash for now, maintaining financial security and flexibility until a good opportunity comes along in the future?
5) Buy back stock to make the company poorer and smaller, but achieve short-term increases in share prices to make our fat stock options more valuable?

 

[mtcn77]

We've got $2,400,000,000 in cash sitting here. Should we...
1) Buy a complimentary business to grow our company, thereby increasing profit now and in future years?

For reference, their 2017 assisted driving company buyout was only 6 times this much.

 

[$ReaPeR$]

What a waist of money..

 

[Palladium]

We've got $2,400,000,000 in cash sitting here. Should we...
1) Buy a complementary business to grow our company, thereby increasing profit now and in future years?
2) Upgrade our manufacturing capability to increase sales volumes and revenue, thereby increasing profit now and in future years?
3) Upgrade our infrastructure to make make us more efficient and reduce costs, thereby increasing profit now and in future years?
4) Sit on the cash for now, maintaining financial security and flexibility until a good opportunity comes along in the future?
5) Buy back stock to make the company poorer and smaller, but achieve short-term increases in share prices to make our fat stock options more valuable?

Because you are seeing things from a plebian PoV. These megacorps, when they make profits its because the Free Market Works™ but when they don't their Fed buddies are gonna bail them out with your money because National Security™ (from insert convenient boogeyman here). We peasants aren't qualified to question their luxurious risk-free rigged games because we didn't bootstrap™ hard enough.