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Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

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Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#41

Post by [deleted] »

candiddevmike wrote: post #22
murbard2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very plausible. Dividends are silly in a world where you can achieve the same result and save everyone 20% tax by doing stock buybacks instead. It's also silly to strongly differentiate between dividend paying stocks and non dividend paying stocks as opposed to focusing on the business' cash flow, unless you're purposely avoiding dividend paying stocks because they suck from a tax perspective. Yet, dividends…

Once upon a time dividend payments were _the reason_ to hold stock in companies. Funny that tax loop holes and the borrowing-against-assets-infinite-money-cheat rendered dividends "silly". Yes this is a shit situation for Intel, but public companies should be paying dividends, IMO.

[deleted]

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#42

Post by milkshakes »

jasonjayr wrote: post #34
hakfoo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they just became terminally risk averse. The thing that made them big is pretty obvious: high-margin premium priced x86 CPUs, which is a position they were able to hold for decades due both to manufacturing excellence and being able to shepherd the standard. They simply can't do it anymore-- execution has stumbled, and the market for x86 is gradually weakening, especially in spaces outside the cut-throat,…

The line-of-business software is quickly turning into a web browser accessing an internal server cluster, and just about any chip can run that nowadays.

servers also have chips though

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#43

Post by causality0 »

hakfoo wrote: post #24
faeriechangling wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know who is invested in Intel that's betting on anything but a high risk high reward underdog story comeback. Intel already was undercompensating to the point of driving the talent out of their company to begin with. These wage cuts are a sign for investors to flee faster because management lacks coherence. Management seems to be betting on a strategy of promising the world to gain government subsidies while…

I wonder if they just became terminally risk averse. The thing that made them big is pretty obvious: high-margin premium priced x86 CPUs, which is a position they were able to hold for decades due both to manufacturing excellence and being able to shepherd the standard. They simply can't do it anymore-- execution has stumbled, and the market for x86 is gradually weakening, especially in spaces outside the cut-throat,…

Man, remember when Intel Xscale was the hot shit for anything mobile? They completely owned the high-end market and then threw it away just a year before the iPhone released.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#44

Post by chrisbolt »

candiddevmike wrote: post #22
murbard2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very plausible. Dividends are silly in a world where you can achieve the same result and save everyone 20% tax by doing stock buybacks instead. It's also silly to strongly differentiate between dividend paying stocks and non dividend paying stocks as opposed to focusing on the business' cash flow, unless you're purposely avoiding dividend paying stocks because they suck from a tax perspective. Yet, dividends…

Once upon a time dividend payments were _the reason_ to hold stock in companies. Funny that tax loop holes and the borrowing-against-assets-infinite-money-cheat rendered dividends "silly". Yes this is a shit situation for Intel, but public companies should be paying dividends, IMO.

If stock buybacks are more tax-efficient, why are dividends better?

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#45

Post by vkou »

rz2k wrote: post #6

When bailed out banks paid bonuses it was understandably unpopular, but there was a certain logic that retaining talent optimized performance of the remaining bank, and therefore it was ultimately in the interest of taxpayers. It seems surprising that Intel either doesn't think that retaining top talent is in the interest of shareholders, or thinks that investors aren't able to understand the investment. I would assu…

> It seems surprising that Intel either doesn't think that retaining top talent is in the interest of shareholders,

When everyone around you is laying thousands of people off, your top talent isn't likely to leave you, regardless of what indignities you heap on it.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#46

Post by lmm »

hakfoo wrote: post #24
faeriechangling wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know who is invested in Intel that's betting on anything but a high risk high reward underdog story comeback. Intel already was undercompensating to the point of driving the talent out of their company to begin with. These wage cuts are a sign for investors to flee faster because management lacks coherence. Management seems to be betting on a strategy of promising the world to gain government subsidies while…

I wonder if they just became terminally risk averse. The thing that made them big is pretty obvious: high-margin premium priced x86 CPUs, which is a position they were able to hold for decades due both to manufacturing excellence and being able to shepherd the standard. They simply can't do it anymore-- execution has stumbled, and the market for x86 is gradually weakening, especially in spaces outside the cut-throat,…

> I wonder if they just became terminally risk averse.

> They could have been using decades of margin to build and consolidate positions in other segments of the market.

That seems pretty simplistic. Optane and Larrabee were bold efforts. (Heck, so was Itanium). It's not like they didn't try throwing money and R&D at things. But that isn't always enough.

> Rather than, say, taking the ARM licenses they ended up flogging and building a competitive mobile CPU on their leading process, they invented weird Atom chips that ended up in like 3 phones.

They made a decent effort with Xscale too, to be fair.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#47

Post by inetknght »

senttoschool wrote: post #18
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're one of the best employees at Intel, who are you going to go work for? Choices are limited, and it's quite likely that those others are going to do roughly the same thing.

There are so many choices if you're a top talent in silicon. Apple, Amazon, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom, one of many AI accelerator startups, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Microsoft, Meta, Google, ARM, TSMC, Micron, Samsung. Just off the top of my head. Everyone is making custom CPUs or accelerators, or both nowadays. This isn't 2005.

How many of those companies fall under nebulous non-compete clauses? How many of the companies have anti-poaching agreements under the table?

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#48

Post by osnium123 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #14
Scubabear68 wrote: post #13

I had to double check it wasn’t April 1st. This is a good way to lose your best employees.

If you're one of the best employees at Intel, who are you going to go work for? Choices are limited, and it's quite likely that those others are going to do roughly the same thing.

This is definitely true on the fab and manufacturing side of Intel. There are few other alternatives and they don’t pay that well.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#49

Post by lmm »

chrisbolt wrote: post #44
candiddevmike wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time dividend payments were _the reason_ to hold stock in companies. Funny that tax loop holes and the borrowing-against-assets-infinite-money-cheat rendered dividends "silly". Yes this is a shit situation for Intel, but public companies should be paying dividends, IMO.

If stock buybacks are more tax-efficient, why are dividends better?

Dividends are cleaner and easier to understand. The tax code shouldn't be encouraging companies to make things more complicated than they need to be.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#50

Post by dilyevsky »

senttoschool wrote: post #18
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're one of the best employees at Intel, who are you going to go work for? Choices are limited, and it's quite likely that those others are going to do roughly the same thing.

There are so many choices if you're a top talent in silicon. Apple, Amazon, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom, one of many AI accelerator startups, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Microsoft, Meta, Google, ARM, TSMC, Micron, Samsung. Just off the top of my head. Everyone is making custom CPUs or accelerators, or both nowadays. This isn't 2005.

> Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu

No longer an option if you’re american

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