Intel Earnings Date: Q3 2026 Report Time, Expectations and Stock Reaction

Plenty of earnings calendars still list October 22. That was a projection, and it is wrong. Intel reports Q3 2026 earnings on Thursday, October 29, 2026, shortly after the US market close, and holds its conference call at 2:00 p.m. PT (5:00 p.m. ET). Intel set the date in an investor-relations release on October 6.

The date matters more than usual for this stock. In the last three reports Intel shares moved 17% down, 24% up and 8% down on the first session after the numbers.

Next Intel earnings date

Intel’s October 6 announcement says results will come “promptly after close of market”, with a live webcast and the slides on intc.com.

What time does Intel report earnings?

Intel reports after the close, and its call starts at 5:00 p.m. ET, half an hour later than Alphabet’s or Meta’s. That leaves about an hour of after-hours trading on the release alone before management says anything. New York is still on daylight saving time (UTC−4) on October 29; US clocks change on November 1.

Alphabet reports the evening before, on October 28, the same day as the Fed’s rate decision (see the Alphabet earnings date page). By Thursday the market will already have one big-tech result and a Fed statement to digest.

Intel earnings calendar: past and upcoming dates

Each of the last four reports came on a Thursday exactly 26 days after Intel’s fiscal quarter ended. Apply the same rule to a quarter ending September 26 and you get October 22, which is where the projected dates came from. Intel chose a week later.

Revenue and EPS come from Intel’s earnings releases filed with the SEC. The reactions come from contemporary coverage: Reuters via Hargreaves Lansdown for October 2025, CNBC for January, Yahoo Finance for April, and market recaps for July. A US close for October 24, 2025 was not reported in the sources checked.

Why GAAP EPS is the wrong number to watch

Look at the GAAP column and Intel seems to be losing more money every quarter while sales grow. In Q2, most of the loss was accounting.

In Q2 2026 Intel lost $11bn on a GAAP basis. The Q2 release pins the bulk of it on a $12.5bn mark-to-market loss on “Escrowed Shares”, stock held for release to the US Department of Commerce as Intel performs under its CHIPS Act Secure Enclave agreement. The size of that charge tracks Intel’s share price. It moves with the stock, not with the business, and it can swing again in Q3.

So the market trades the non-GAAP figure, and the consensus numbers below are non-GAAP. If the headline GAAP EPS looks shocking on October 29, check the escrowed-share line before reacting. The guide to reading an earnings report covers the GAAP and adjusted split in more detail.

Q3 2026 guidance vs consensus

Unlike Alphabet, Intel guides every quarter, so there are two benchmarks: the company’s own range and the analyst consensus that has drifted above it.

Analysts sit above the midpoint on revenue and above Intel’s EPS guide. That is a reasonable bet on recent form: in Q2 Intel guided to $0.20 and delivered $0.42, and guided revenue of $13.8bn to $14.8bn against an actual $16.1bn. It also means a result that simply hits the guidance would read as a miss against the Street.

About $16.5bn would be roughly 20% above Q3 2025. A gross margin at or above 42% would be the highest in the five quarters shown here, after 37.9% in Q4 2025 and 41.8% in Q2 2026 (see gross margin for why chipmakers’ margins swing so hard with factory utilisation).

What could move Intel stock on October 29

The Q4 outlook

January is the lesson. Intel beat on the quarter, then guided Q1 2026 revenue to $11.7bn to $12.7bn with non-GAAP EPS of zero, below LSEG estimates, and warned of supply shortages. The stock fell about 17%, its worst day since August 2024 according to CNBC. In April the pattern ran the other way: a Q2 guide of $13.8bn to $14.8bn against roughly $13bn expected helped the 24% rally. The Q4 range will likely decide the direction more than the Q3 numbers.

Data center demand and supply

Data Center and AI revenue rose 59% to $6.3bn in Q2, after 22% growth in Q1. Management ties the demand to AI workloads that run on CPUs, and in April Intel said demand still exceeded supply. Watch whether DCAI growth holds near Q2’s pace and whether supply limits are still capping sales.

Foundry customers and 14A

Intel Foundry revenue was $5.8bn in Q2, up 31%. The bull case needs outside customers on top of Intel’s own chips. Intel’s 2026 annual report says customers are expected to make Intel 14A decisions in the second half of 2026 and into the first half of 2027, so this call falls inside that window. Tesla has agreed to use 14A, according to Intel disclosures covered by Yahoo Finance on October 19; Elon Musk first linked Tesla to the node in April. Any further named customer, or a slip in the decision timetable, would matter.

Cash, capex and dilution

Adjusted free cash flow was −$8.4bn in Q2, including a $12.2bn net outflow tied to partner contributions. In April Intel agreed to buy back a 49% fab stake from Apollo for $14.2bn. In July CFO Dave Zinsner said Intel was meaningfully increasing investment in equipment, clean room space and substrates; coverage of the call put 2026 capex above $20bn, up from about $18bn. In August Intel then sold about 210.5m new shares at $95 to raise $20bn, upsized from $15bn. Expect questions on how far that money stretches.

Kiryat Gat

On October 14 an explosion during a gas delivery at Fab 28 in Kiryat Gat, Israel, killed two workers, DatacenterDynamics reported. Intel had not said whether production was affected. Analysts will likely ask.

How Intel stock reacts to earnings

Few large-cap stocks move like this on earnings. Across the four reports in the calendar the moves were roughly 7%, 17%, 24% and 8%, and two of them ran against the headline: Q4 2025 and Q2 2026 were both beats that sold off.

The July sell-off is the most useful case. Intel beat on revenue and doubled the EPS consensus, and the shares jumped in after-hours trading. They then closed about 7.9% lower the next day as the focus moved to higher capital spending and the cost of the foundry build-out. The first after-hours print is not the verdict.

The stock goes into this report weak. It closed at $89.85 on October 16 after a 5.8% fall, according to TradingKey, below the $95 price of the August offering. On October 19 JPMorgan upgraded Intel to Neutral from Underweight with an $85 target, citing a “more balanced risk/reward” after the stock fell about 36% from its June peak, per TradingPedia.

No reliable current options-implied move had been published as of October 20. The implied volatility on the at-the-money straddle for the October 30 weekly expiry, checked on the day, gives the market’s own estimate.

How to prepare for Intel earnings

1. Put the right time in your calendar. Results around 4:00 p.m. ET on October 29, call at 5:00 p.m. ET. Ignore any calendar still showing October 22.
2. Write down the bar. Revenue $16.5bn and EPS $0.40 for the Street; $15.8bn to $16.8bn and $0.38 for Intel. A result between the two is ambiguous.
3. Read the Q4 guide first. Then gross margin, DCAI growth and anything on 14A customers. Skip the GAAP EPS headline.
4. Plan for the gap. With a 17% and a 24% move in the last year, the stock can open far from Thursday’s close. A stop-loss does not protect against a price gap; size the position for the gap.
5. Wait for the call if you can. In July the after-hours rise reversed by the next close.

For general tactics around reports, see how to trade earnings and the earnings season guide. Intel is also a Nasdaq 100 member, and the effect of earnings season on stock indices applies on October 30 too.

Trading Intel earnings on PrimeXBT

PrimeXBT offers Intel as a share CFD, so you can take a long or short position on INTC around the report from the same account used for crypto, forex and indices, without owning the shares. A CFD carries the same gap risk as the stock: if Intel opens 10% lower on October 30, a long position opens 10% lower too. Follow the Intel share price chart into the release, and check current trading conditions on the platform before you size a trade. If the product is new to you, start with how CFD trading works.

One more number to keep on screen: $95. That is where Intel sold 210 million new shares in August, and on October 16 the stock closed below it.

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