Intel (INTC) Sapphire Rapids launch good, but ‘insufficient to reverse share shifts’ says analyst
By Sam Boughedda
On Tuesday, Intel (NASDAQ:) held its official launch event for its highly anticipated and much delayed 4th gen Xeon Scalable processors, also known as Sapphire Rapids.
The company revealed various vital updates, and while analysts at BofA, Wells Fargo, and Stifel were positive in their notes reacting to the launch, they also provided a somewhat underwhelmed tone.
Wells Fargo analysts, who have an Equal Weight rating and $32 price target on the stock, said there were “no big surprises.”
“Sapphire Rapids features 8x DDR5 memory channels (same number of channels w/ prior-gen Ice Lake Xeon-SP). This compares to AMD’s Zen-4 5nm Genoa EPYC server CPUs moving to support 12x DDR5 memory channels. However, Intel’s Max Series SKUs feature up to 64GB of on-board HBM2e for memory intensive workloads; likely to be positioned against AMD’s forthcoming Genoa-X (3D V-Cache) higher-performance next-gen CPUs to launch in 2023,” explained the analysts.
Meanwhile, BofA analysts declared that while the new servers are better, they are “insufficient to reverse share shifts.” They maintained an Underperform rating and a $28 price target on the stock.
“Importantly, Sapphire Rapids excels in single-threaded performance and in certain AI/security applications, but AMD’s Genoa continues to offer better price-to-performance,” said the analysts. “Though a big step forward, we think Sapphire Rapids is likely insufficient to reverse the current share loss dynamic, and we anticipate INTC server share loss to continue through CY23/24 for another 1-2 cycles.”
Stifel analysts maintained a Hold rating and a $28 price target on Intel. They told investors in their note that “while INTC appears positioned to regain some momentum in high-growth workloads, share losses remain likely in broader workload areas this year.”
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