Intel Corp (INTC)

[ibc]

Congratulations on an epic run in the stock!

I'm still going to be critical of the company.

Can someone explain/speculate what the strategy is behind the foundry business?

x86 MPUs have the highest margins in the semiconductor industry.
The opportunity cost to fab for someone else's lower margin designs must be enormous!
Sure, they'll charge a premium, but there's no way I'm going to believe 60+% gross margins on foundry silicon.

One potential reason is that they built out too much capacity and therefore couldn't fill their fabs with x86 MPUs even if they wanted to. Ok, maybe they did that for 22nm / 14nm, but... If that is the case, isn't Intel assuming more risk by now having to forecast future foundry-customer demand in addition to their own processor demand?

What if they undershoot their forecast for PC (as just happened in this quarter's numbers). Will foundry customers be out of luck in capacity allocation?

Is this more of a strategic move to cut off the oxygen supply to the foundries like GloFo, TSMC etc...?

CAN they get 60%+ gross margin on foundry?