Intel announces abrupt retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger

Breaking news crossing the wire in the last hour in battle. Chipmaker Intel announcing the retirement of its CEO Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger has retired from the company and stepped down from its board of directors just as the company is in the middle of trying to execute on a turnaround plan. Take a look at shares of Intel here this morning. They are rising following the news here as we're tracking INTC shares this morning and of course all across this story as he has continued to have many conversations over the years with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. We've got our own executive editor Brian Sazi here on set with us. Saz, I mean you see news like this come across here. Was the writing on the wall and what was the overall kind of tenor that you got from really speaking with Gelsinger over the years leading to this point? Well I am told a person familiar with the matter a couple of notes here. Pat is devastated by the news but in some respects I guess did see it coming. Small team inside of Intel working on this one. It's my understanding that the leadership team at Intel just found out perhaps yesterday evening on this decision. Ultimately this came down to Pat just losing the confidence I believe of the board and investors and there's really two moments here or a couple moments that I think stick out here and you could have seen the writing on the wall like you mentioned Brad. First up when Intel reported a couple weeks ago they took a 15.9 billion dollar write down. It's my experience when companies old school companies like this take this type of write down it's never a good look on the leader making a call on that write down. Had me thinking back to when Kraft Heinz took down a massive write down a couple years ago and its various assets sort of along the same line so not good. And look when Pat came in here this announcement when Pat joined the company January 13th 2021 the stock's down 60 percent since and over the time span you know Pat has tried to get more build a foundry business or a business that is out there making chips for other companies he's tried to restore the company's leadership position in chips. Since he's been there we've seen the rise of NVIDIA we've seen the rise of AMD making really powerful chips dominating the investor story on Yahoo Finance as companies leading the pack on all things AI chips and Intel has not played in this. I encourage everyone that has been following this Intel story go back to this press release announcing this decision. It is not lost on me someone's been following Intel for a while but they are focusing on a renewed emphasis on products renewed emphasis on the consumer. I think the next step will be it's unclear if it's going to be an unwind of the foundry business that Intel tried to get into the ground or a pullback over time but I think that business will be under review by the two interim CEOs and then of course when a new official CEO is announced because this has been a business that has announced that has sucked up a lot of capital expenditures for Intel CapEx that could have been spent elsewhere on the business. You know it has two questions here it's probably too early to tell obviously the one question I think many investors are asking this morning is who is the likely replacement we probably don't know that yet given the fact that we just got this news but but I think also just more broadly given some of the changes that we could see to the business do you think that this is going to help really restore that lost investor confidence or how should investors be looking at that? You know we're seeing a little pop in Intel shares but the fact you're not seeing a larger pop it takes a while whoever comes in to lead Intel ultimately if it's one of the co-CEOs that were just interim that were just posted or just announced to lead the company or if it's someone from the outside coming to Intel it takes a while to restore confidence and this is something that Intel mentioned in its press release when you take close to 16 billion dollars of write downs and you are taking your missing analyst estimates these things add up and it doesn't restoring confidence with investors doesn't happen overnight it comes after a series of quarters but you know as you mentioned guys we talked to we've been talking to Pat Gelsinger really since day one that he joined Intel here's what he had to say about where the company is in its turnaround just about a month ago. We beat our metrics on Q3 and we raised our guidance for Q4 so really proud of our team for getting so much restructuring done this quarter and still delivering superior financial results this quarter and into the future. The major restructuring efforts that we've largely finished this quarter you know the we'll say the second phase of the transformation as we move from getting back in the game and we invested heavily in capacity and technology development and products that were competitive now it's time for us to focus on having the financial and shareholder returns associated with those heavy investments of the last three and a half years and that's what this next phase of the transformation is all about. You know in Lawson all this news today is Pat Gelsinger the human being and this person really came out of college to lead Intel in his early years I believe he was their first chief product officer left of course to run VMware then came back in 2021 to lead Intel. Pat bleeds Intel he has long he loves his company and no matter what the company has reported he's come on Yahoo Finance and given it to us pretty much straight these are the numbers here's what I'm trying to do loves Intel so for him I think this is also a closing of a chapter on his life's work. Yeah began his career in 1979 at Intel to your point been there for decades and really see this brand grow we do know that they're going to be two interim co-ceos for right now until they make that ultimate decision David Zinsner and then Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Sal, thanks so much. All right thanks I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Yep.