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Intel is what we're talking about here. The company is confirming that it is making some changes to personnel and its numbers are missing estimates, pretty much across the board here, particularly when you're looking forward. Adjusted earnings per share in the first quarter did beat estimates. It looks like adjusted earnings per share at 13 cents. Analysts were looking for nearly break even on that basis. Adjusted gross margin in the first quarter, 39.2%, the estimate was for 36.1%. But the second quarter forecast is for revenue of at most $12.4 billion. Analysts had been predicting $12.9 billion. And here too, I'm looking at the statement, Lip Butan, the CEO who's just been in place for, you know, what, about six weeks or something. And he talked about the first quarter being a step in the right direction. But he says, quote, I am taking swift actions to drive better execution and operational efficiency while empowering our engineers to create great products. And then they talk about in the statement here, streamlining the organization, eliminating management layers and enabling faster decision making. So, the company's cutting its non-gap operating expense target to about $17 billion this year. It had been $17.5 billion that they were targeting. And they're targeting an operating expense target again on a non-gap basis of $16 billion for 2026. So, really focusing on this efficiency, trying to right the ship here. But it is interesting, you know, investors in Intel have already been so very patient, right? They waited through the Pat Gelsinger era for them to turn things around. Now they've got a new CEO. How much time are they going to give him to now turn things around? Judging from the reaction here, maybe not a lot.

Well, as I like to talk to investors about, look, it takes a long time to take a stock that's at 52-week lows and think that it can immediately start to climb back. He had a well-respected leader like Lipotan from Cadence. And so he's executing his own version of Doge now, not only with employees, but also expenses. So I think there's reasons to be encouraged in terms of cost cutting steps and things he's doing to try to turn things around, but it's going to take time. Intel is a classic underperformer and a real laggard within the space. And for those that are looking for immediate results, you know, you don't get rich trying to buy dips. You buy things that are at or near highs and stocks like Nvidia, which have led, you know, all of the semiconductors outside of, uh, you know, TSM and Broadcom over the last 12 months. So, you know, those are areas that make a lot of sense for me. Intel, it's going to take time. There's nothing, you know, it's my thinking is it's difficult to put a lot of money into a stock at historic lows and you just have to be very, very patient, unfortunately. That means you have to wait till the stock almost gets above 24. And you have to wait until you see real proof and then you can start to put more money to work.

And it feels like a couple times over the really the last couple quarters, I feel like we've been talking about this name after earnings. We talk to an analyst and they say not quite yet on Intel, right? I'm talking about chip specific analysts, right? They were always sort of saying, well, that's probably a story that might materialize a year or two down the road, right? And so I think we're just quarter after quarter continuing to see that and essentially confirming that whenever the turnaround story is fully happening, yes, they're starting the process now, but we're just really not quite there, right? And it feels like it it's something very off in the distance and in the future that isn't quite tangible yet. Obviously, they're trying to restructure. You can see the efforts going on, but until you get a little bit more tangible evidence, to Mark's point, it feels a little bit hard to get excited about the story overall.