Ca$htag$: INTC Consumer Sentiment Surge Follows Stock Trends

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Time now for our Cash Tag segment. For that, let's bring in our next guest, and that is Megan Brantley, Vice President of Research at LikeFolio, with a deep dive into Intel, which is lower today.

All right, Megan, so what's the Intel on Intel?

Megan Brantley (0:13)

Yeah, so whenever we look at Intel, as you mentioned, stock down about 5 percent today. I think it's about 30 percent off of those September highs, but still about 150 percent higher than it was a year ago. So a big ride up and now coming down a bit for Intel, and when we look at this, it's a unique name for us to cover because obviously this isn't as inherently consumer facing versus say a Walmart that we typically talk about. But what we can look at are a couple of things. One of that is sentiment and we have a unique chart on here today where we can look at investor sentiment for Intel specifically and how that has changed in relation to the stock, and we saw that really start to peak in 2025 and start to drop off in June this year. You can see that sentiment on that yellow line right there.

On our end, we have that bottoming out a bit in September and now starting to rise a bit. For us, we're starting to see those line converge whenever you look at the year over year change of the stock versus those overall investor sentiment levels. We like to see those meet. We think that some of this pullback perhaps was a bit warranted just as the stock got a bit ahead of itself. But long term, when we look five years down the road, we also see a big shift in just how AI is being consumed. We can look at what AI was required to build models, and then now what it cost to use models. As consumers shift into more of an agentic use mode that lends itself more toward Intel and the processors that it serves. Long term, Intel is sitting in a really nice spot, but certainly we've seen some sentiment shocks this year, just as the stock traded so high.

SPEAKER_3 (2:01)

Megan, when you guys look at that sentiment data, and I know this is like, it's a tech company, right? Now, maybe not the same type of data that you're getting on a Walmart, right? But when you look at that, is this based on customers saying they're buying something with an Intel chip in it, or is it more like, hey, is this a stock traders out there talking about Intel stock, and they're pretty excited, even though the stock's fallen about 35% from those record highs that we saw in July. Your data reflects that you guys had softening sentiment data. But what's the breakdown of maybe the people that post about this, as far as social sentiment goes, that's versus a customer versus maybe somebody trading a stock that's excited about it?

Megan Brantley (2:48)

We're filtering down for mentions for the actual products itself and for the actual company itself versus listening for say, like a cash tag mentioned specifically. But this could be people who are, let's say maybe they are invested in Intel and they're talking about how their products stack up versus say an AMD. You've got a little bit of crossover there, but at the heart of it, you're looking for sentiment in terms of the company itself and also its products. So that lends itself to any clarity there, but certainly you're going to get some mentions that we're tracking whenever it comes to sentiment, where you have traders who are discussing maybe how Intel stacks up versus competitors, how its products and how its outlook compares versus where the stock is trading. So a little bit muddy there, but certainly it's very predictive on our end when we look at this, and we like to see this a bit as it looks like some of the bleeding is about to stop, as Intel pulls back in those line converge. We think that right now the stock is falling more in line with where it perhaps should be priced to see whenever we look at these demand levels. One thing not on there is we can see people who are talking about those chips and interest in those chips, and we have that up about 29 percent year over year to give a reference for peers versus like an Nvidia or even AMD. We actually have Intel gaining some momentum on AMD for the first time in our data, which is interesting, but we have that really underpacing Nvidia, where that demand is up about 81 percent year over year.