Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) stock has finally moved higher this year after two years of constant declines.
Wall Street analysts, however, see only a modest rise from the current stock price within the next 12 months.
The average analyst target price sees an 8% gain
Analyst consensus at TipRanks is a ‘hold’ for the INTC stock based on 30 analysts in the last three months. Their average price target is $36.07, which is 8% higher than the current price of $33.14.
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After two straight quarters of losses, Intel recently reported profitability in its Q2 earnings report. Refinitiv analysts expected 3 cents loss for the quarter, but Intel earned 13 cents per share. Intel expects earnings to grow to 20 cents per share for Q3 on revenue of $13.4 billion.
Intel also posted a net income of $1.5 billion for Q2 versus a loss of $454 million in the same quarter last year, which could explain why the stock price has performed well in 2023.
The company CEO Pat Gelsinger said on the earnings call that Intel still sees persistent weakness in all segments of its business through year-end. He added that cloud companies were mostly focused on acquiring graphics processors for artificial intelligence instead of Intel’s central processors.
This has no doubt stifled even bigger gains this year.
Intel stock technical analysis
The analysts’ modest price target for the next 12 months seems in line with what the technical charts show.
The price has been trading in an ascending channel since early 2023. This is typically a bearish pattern where the price breaks on the lower side after making higher highs and higher lows. A break below the channel is likely to pull the price down to $30, which is a strong support level.
It’s likely, however, that the price will continue to bounce between $30 and $40 in the coming months unless some major catalyst pushes the price beyond these two levels.
Intel has already outperformed the S&P 500’s 15% return year-to-date, with a 24% gain during the same period.
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