Management and incentives

Intel Corp. INTC

Intel pays Lip-Bu Tan to grow revenue, hold spending down and beat the S&P 500, and his March 2025 awards are worth roughly $640 million at maximum against the $66 million the board negotiated. The measures he is graded on exclude by name the $1.8 billion of stock Intel pays its people and the $13.6 billion loss on shares owed to Washington, so the largest costs of the turnaround never reach his scorecard.

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Intel Corp. INTCThe bet you're really making is that Intel finally learns to make chips as well as Taiwan does, and that the world's biggest tech companies pay Intel to build their chips in its American factories. You're betting the new 18A manufacturing process works and wins outside customers to fill factories that today sit half-used making Intel's own parts. Right now it is mixed: sales jumped 25% to $16.1 billion last quarter, the best in years, yet Intel still lost $11 billion to write-downs and taxes and burned $4.4 billion in cash. You pay about 31 times the profit analysts expect in 2028, with almost none today, far above the 10 to 16 times it fetched last decade when it was minting money. Company reportSep 6 Intel Corp. INTCIntel's foundry lost 72 cents on every revenue dollar six quarters ago and loses 36 today, narrowing in a straight line. Competitive advantageAug 25 IonQ, Inc. IONQThe bet you're really making is that quantum computers stop being lab experiments and start doing paid work, and that IonQ's trapped-ion machines, the kind Amazon and Nvidia already plug into, are the ones customers keep buying. You're betting the $485 million of orders already on the books turns into cash before IonQ runs low, because it spends far more than it earns and fills the gap by printing new stock. Right now sales are exploding, $80 million last quarter, nearly four times a year earlier, yet the company lost money running the business every single quarter and those losses keep growing. You pay about 60 times sales, because there are no profits to price, and even on the revenue Wall Street sees three years out, still 23 times. Company reportSep 7 Quantinuum Inc. Class A Common Stock QNTThe bet you're really making is that quantum computing becomes a real business, and that Quantinuum's machines, which trap single atoms with lasers to run the math, are the ones customers pay for first. You're betting the biggest buyer, the U.S. government, keeps writing checks, and that the $2.1 billion in the bank lasts long enough to find out. Right now it is tiny: $8 million of sales last quarter, almost quadruple a year ago, against a $555 million operating loss. You pay almost 1,000 times last year's sales, and the stock has fallen 43% from its high since listing this year. Company reportSep 7