Intel announced a proposed $15 billion underwritten public offering of common stock before the market opened on Monday. It filed a registration statement on Form S-3 with the SEC. Underwriters hold a 30-day option on up to $2.25bn of additional shares. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are joint book-running managers.
The use of proceeds runs to a single sentence. The money goes to general corporate purposes, “which may include, but are not limited to, capital expenditures and working capital.”
The release sets no price, discloses no share count and names no project. It does frame the raise defensively. The offering lets Intel pursue growth “while maintaining a strong balance sheet and its commitment to an investment-grade rating.”
The buyback goes into reverse
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, supplied the arithmetic to Reuters. Intel, he said, went “a long way to wrecking its own balance sheet and prospects by focusing on financial engineering rather than physical engineering, courtesy of $82 billion of share buybacks in the 2010s.”
