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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

#71

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 invested when they announced their ARC GPUs at the height of the chip shortage. Took them so long to deliver it seems like they lost their chance.

Unfortunately, what they delivered was also extremely underwhelming. I expected something that would at least be a mid-range GPU, but they ended up releasing trash tier casual gamer cards. I do not believe that was their intent. AMD and Nvidia are just too competitive today.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#72
As an investor, I would have been fine with cutting the dividend if it meant saving the compensation of employees.

Intel has a lot going for it still, but this is a sure fire way to hurt morale and create an exodus of good talent and future leadership, especially when your key rivals are hiring.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re predicting a major decline of globalism, then betting on a domestic firm in an extremely economically important sector that is currently extremely reliant on globalism doesn’t sound that crazy.

What stops the Americans from simply stealing (or buying) TSMC or Samsung or whatever technology with how deep their fingers are into those companies and starting up fabs as needed? Even if the world "Deglobalizes" overall does that really mean that America maintaining its influence over countries like Taiwan and Japan and South Korea is not an option if the issue is important enough? America also has AMD/Nvidia for…

I had high hopes that Gelsinger would be able to pull it off. But seeing this makes me think that he's getting too much pushback from other factions within Intel and the institutional investors.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#74

As an investor, I would have been fine with cutting the dividend if it meant saving the compensation of employees. Intel has a lot going for it still, but this is a sure fire way to hurt morale and create an exodus of good talent and future leadership, especially when your key rivals are hiring.

Agreed. This is a very capital intensive business. They should be investing that capital into upgrading their technology. The dividend should be off the table for the next few years, at least. Paying a dividend probably made sense in the 90s and even into the early 2000s when Intel pretty much owned the whole PC CPU market. But now they're in a tough spot and the only way out is to invest that money that they're throwing out there as dividends.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#75

Pay cuts are better than layoffs. That said, investors need to take a paycut in dividends as well.

> Pay cuts are better than layoffs.

Unfortunately, I highly doubt that. With pay cut, comes a huge drop in morale across all the employees. Highly performers even consider leaving, and some employees leave.

After a layoff, the rest of the employees are more productive and the company gets to decide which employees to lay off (depending on business needs, comp-to-productivity, or whatever else).

> That said, investors need to take a paycut in dividends as well.

Totally agreed. As an investor and an employee, I feel sad to see my peers be laid off just so that a company can pay the same dividends and maintain earnings.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#76

Even weirder that last year Intel trebled the stock bonus, added a high performer profit bonus adder, and increased base pay by a lot. What a strange about face. What is Pat doing?

I had high hopes for Pat, but I think the institutional investors have been getting to him.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#77
If I were an Intel employee I would never accept a pay cut "justified" by the company's willingness to pay dividends. Investors get dividends when the management creates a reasonable amount of profits, not when employees have to waive their dues to do investors a favor.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#79

Even weirder that last year Intel trebled the stock bonus, added a high performer profit bonus adder, and increased base pay by a lot. What a strange about face. What is Pat doing?

Thinking in terms of quarters rather than years or even decades.

Sure, and that's been the problem with the last couple of CEOs before Pat, but Pat came in expressly saying he was going to take the long view. I suspect that he's visited been by some large institutional investors who don't take the long view.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#80
post #36

"All employees below Principal Engineer, grades 7 to 11, will get a 5% cut, 10% cuts will be instituted for VPs, and the executive leadership team will take a 15% cut, with Pat Gelsinger taking a 25% cut. " So the OP would rather have Intel fire thousands of employees?

They're already firing thousands of employees (and thousands more contractors who don't get counted in the layoff numbers)
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