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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

#151
post #90

If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater. Since executive compensation is stock-based, tied to the stock performance, or both, there's an obvious incentive to keep the dividend going. The dividend has become more political than normal. In finance theory, a dividend is supposed to be a paid-out return. If you're cutting salaries to pay the dividend that means that you don't have enough surplus...by definition.…

Why is that, aren’t buy backs better for investors anyway? One reason I imagine is them being excluded from dividend etfs which would mean an outflow

I can spend a divided. Especially if I have to take a mandatory distribution. You have to sell (at the right time) to get profit from a buyback

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater Not necessarily. It really makes zero difference to the valuation of a company. Investors really punish companies that can barely cover their dividend (or worse have to borrow). If earnings are bad and revenues are not growing, the dividend is just a hokey shell game that works for about 5 minutes.

Depends on the investor. There is an entire class of investor that is focused on stocks that reliably deliver a dividend. I wasn't aware that Intel had joined old-economy companies like oil, but I also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset, as I can't figure out a tax situation that makes it appealing...

Probably works out fine for investors who have retired from their professional career.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a wishfully pessimistic and cynical point of view. Multinationals are made of people and like people, some of them have more less turncoat attitudes. TSMC would probably not abandon Taiwan, it knows it's essential to its defense.

Nothing about my comment implies they’d have to. The US just wants supply chain security and availability. That can be done by TSMC factories in the US regardless of where else they have factories.

not really. the US cares a lot more about Taiwan if they are making the chips for the US. a sizable part of Taiwan's national defense strategy is to have a benevolent monopoly on cutting edge chip production so their allies think it's worth it to fight a war with China if necessary.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#155
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…

> there was a certain logic that retaining talent optimized performance

why do people still think a bunch of coked up degenerates who almost bankrupted the world are "talent".....

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#156
post #106

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?

Intel is projecting a loss next quarter, something that hasn't happened in a really long time. Pat doesn't want it to happen on his watch, but I think it would have been better to cut the dividend or take the loss than to do pay/bonus/benefit cuts like this. Wouldn't be surprised if the words "organize" and "union" are spoken in hushed tones by a few people in the hallways tomorrow. If that gets any momentum behind i…

They had a loss last quarter of $700 million [1]. They had a loss of $500 million in Q2 of 2022 [2]

[1] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1600/...

[2] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1563/...

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Intel an underdog next to AMD? I don't know many business machines running AMD.

Intel has been shitting the bed for a decade+ now

not quite, Haswell was only 9.5 years ago :) fma+avx2 is a pretty nice architecture boost.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#158

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…

How is Intel an underdog next to AMD? I don't know many business machines running AMD.

Intel are screwed. Many of its biggest customers have started just making their own chips instead. The bleeding edge of compute appears to be falling to Nvidia (who now make both the chips and the network that connects them). Their latest GPU project is going the way of their other GPU projects. They don't even have the biggest/baddest fab capability thing going on any more. I have no idea what's going on in there, but I can imagine, and it's not pretty.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater Not necessarily. It really makes zero difference to the valuation of a company. Investors really punish companies that can barely cover their dividend (or worse have to borrow). If earnings are bad and revenues are not growing, the dividend is just a hokey shell game that works for about 5 minutes.

Depends on the investor. There is an entire class of investor that is focused on stocks that reliably deliver a dividend. I wasn't aware that Intel had joined old-economy companies like oil, but I also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset, as I can't figure out a tax situation that makes it appealing...

> also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset

Suppose you have ~5 million invested for retirement. The dividend you could get from this is ~100k-150k per year.

That is a very livable salary if you want to retire early (45? 50?) and focus on your family and hobbies.

Does this make sense yet? It's essentially a conservative way to lead your live if you are not necessarily married to your profession.

Re: Intel Cuts Employee Pay to Maintain Quarterly Dividend

#160
> Intel’s leadership has decided that the dividend is more important than employee retention

That's what happens when you're a publicly traded company? Your primary role once you're listed is to make your stockholders money, and if you don't, your stockholders will vote to replace the people at the top refusing to focus on dividends. You can have all the morals and ethics and good intentions and those amount to a sum total of zero after IPO, because unless you bought enough of your own stock to retain majority control, you no longer own the ship, you only get to set the course and steer it, and if you don't do a good enough job at that, the ship owners will have you replaced.

It's a shit system, but that's the system.

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