Didn’t want to submit this separately since it’s more business than hardware news, but Intel’s credit rating got downgraded to BBB (from BBB+) by Fitch: https://www.techspot.com/news/108942-intel-credit-rating-drops-two-steps-above-junk.html
I was reading about that earlier.
They really look their imploding.
It’s actually surprised me to discover that many of the “big computer hardware” companies in the west have somewhat low ratings compared to what I had expected, so maybe this isn’t quite as big of a deal as I thought.
- Seagate is currently Ba2 (Moody’s) / BB (S&P’s) / BB+ (Fitch)
- Corsair was BB- (S&P’s) about a year ago
- Western Digital is BB+ (Fitch)
Nvidia’s and AMD’s respective credit ratings look higher (though I’m having trouble immediately finding recent numbers), but they’re also “hot” right now so probably aren’t a good comparison.
I think the bigger story is that Intel is going from “blue chip” type tech stock to more like Seagate or WD (declining revenues on a historical basis).
Investing another $400 billion in the US sounds like a bigger commitment than buying Intel.
I am not even sure what TSMC would do with 49% of Intel. Upgrade their Intel’s existing fabs using TSMC tech? I can’t imagine TSMC getting into developing semiconductors (e.g. x86 CPUs), doesn’t seem to fit their strategy and Intel only strong position is x86 CPUs for laptops.
A mere decrease of tariffs from 20% to 15% doesn’t seem all that enticing (without security guarantees for Taiwan), one would think TSMC could easily make their customers eat the 5% extra tariff cost, it’s not like they have much of an option.
Trump is only doing this to save Intel which is already having trouble with new chip fabrication, so bring on the idiotic tarrifs and TSMC will sell to every other country and America will slowly fall behind the rest of the world.
