Stop Buying Intel. You’ve Missed the Train. Buy This Instead

Intel is having a moment again, with the Intel (NASDAQ:INTC | INTC Price Prediction) turnaround story dragging retail money back into a name that has spent the past four years as a cautionary tale. But the two companies that already won the war Intel is still trying to fight deserve your attention more.

I think the Intel trade is sort of over.

The pitch on Intel is that the foundry business will finally work, that 18A is real, that the government money cements it, and that you are early. You are not early. The stock’s 50-day moving average sits at $69.50 against a 200-day at $44.79, which tells you the retail crowd has already done the buying. The fundamentals underneath that move are a trailing EPS of negative $0.60, a profit margin of negative 5.9%, and quarterly earnings growth of negative 71.7% year over year. You are being asked to pay a forward P/E of 156x for a company whose recent “beats” come against estimates analysts had compressed to a penny per share. A 2,800% surprise on a one-cent estimate is just arithmetic on a tiny denominator.

And the analyst community knows it. The consensus target is $85, against 30 hold ratings, 3 strong sells, and only 2 strong buys. That is a Wall Street shrug while retail pays up. Meanwhile, the part of the chip cycle that is actually compounding has nothing to do with whether Intel’s Ohio fabs hit yield.

The company actually building the AI chips

Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE:TSM) is the root of the AI GPU supply chain, and saying so is closer to bookkeeping than to a hot take. It trades much more cheaply than Intel and arguably has more upside from here, because there’s no alternative to this giant with an unshakeable moat. Three things matter, and they matter in order.

First, the moat is already monetized. TSM holds 72.3% foundry market share, and AI and HPC accounted for 61% of Q1 2026 revenue. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) silicon all run through these fabs. When demand for an H100 successor spikes, the order does not go to Santa Clara. It goes to Hsinchu.

Second, the growth is real and accelerating against rising consensus estimates. Q1 2026 delivered EPS of $3.49 against a $3.31 consensus, record revenue of $35.9 billion, and 58% year-over-year profit growth at a 62.3% gross margin. Management raised the full-year 2026 revenue growth outlook to above 30%. The trailing P/E is 35x, the forward P/E is 26x, and you are buying a 46.5% profit margin and 58.1% operating margin. Intel does not have one of those numbers within reach.

Third, the capital is already being deployed. More than $50 billion in global capacity expansion is underway across Arizona, Washington, and Japan, which is what a near-monopoly does when it actually has the orders to fill the fabs. The 18-quarter streak of earnings beats is already priced as a 99.9% probability event by prediction markets before each report.

The other monopoly nobody mentions

If TSM is the root of the chain, ASML Holding (NASDAQ:ASML) is the root of the root. No EUV lithography machine, no advanced chip, period. TSMC, Samsung, and yes, Intel, all buy from the same single supplier in Veldhoven. That is what a monopoly looks like on a balance sheet: FY 2026 revenue guided to $42.47 billion to $47.19 billion, a record $15.28 billion in Q4 2025 net bookings, and a year-end backlog of $45.06 billion.

Moreover, capital return is where the contrast with Intel sharpens. ASML approved a new share buyback program of up to 12 billion euros running through December 2028 and raised the 2025 dividend to 7.50 euros per share, up 17% versus 2024. CEO Christophe Fouquet’s framing is plain: “Demand for chips is outpacing supply…customers are accelerating their capacity expansion plans for 2026 and beyond.” Intel is selling you hope. ASML is sending you a check.

The Intel headline distracts from the supply chain that made it possible: TSM and ASML.