Intel slashes dividend by over 65%, to 12.5 cents

Intel cut its quarterly dividend by more than 65%, from 36.5 cents to 12.5 cents, the chipmaker announced Wednesday, weeks after the company implemented a wide-ranging set of cost cuts.

Intel shares were largely flat in premarket trading Wednesday after the news.

The dividend will be payable on June 1. “Prudent allocation of our owners’ capital is important to enable our IDM 2.0 strategy and sustain our momentum as we rebuild our execution engine,” CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a press release announcing the cut.

The company also reaffirmed its recently issued outlook for the first quarter of 2023. Intel guided to a 15 cent non-GAAP loss per share but didn’t issue full-year guidance, citing economic uncertainty.

Intel’s most recent results, a top- and bottom-line miss and a $664 million net loss for the fourth quarter of 2022, sent its share price sharply down.

Intel’s stock has fallen nearly 60% from its 2021 high, a reflection of both a challenging PC market and of company-specific issues, including a surplus of chips and underutilized factories.

The company said it aimed to deliver $3 billion in cost savings this year, in part through compensation cuts. Intel’s fourth-quarter loss was the chipmaker’s largest since 2017.

“No words can portray or explain the historic collapse of Intel,” Rosenblatt analyst Hans Mosesmann wrote after the earnings report.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom, Jordan Novet and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.