Bank of America's Rare Double Upgrade Pushes INTC to $118

The Double Upgrade

Intel's Hyperliquid perp is up 12.13% over 19 hours to $118.30, and this leg has a real, discrete catalyst behind it rather than the foundry story simply firming up again. On June 11, Bank of America's Vivek Arya double-upgraded the stock from Underperform straight to Buy, skipping the Neutral way station entirely. Double upgrades are rare — analysts almost always step through a hold rating first — so this is the firm's most bearish analyst on the name capitulating in a single move. Arya also lifted his price target from $96 to $135, about 26% above the prior close. The tape treated it accordingly: shares opened near $113.52 and pushed to an intraday high of $119.08 before holding most of the gain into the close.

The Thesis Quietly Moved

What's worth noticing is what Arya actually leaned on. The bull case that ran Intel up through early June was the reported Google order for more than three million TPUs for 2028 delivery — a foundry story that books no revenue for years. BofA's upgrade pivots toward the CPU side: stronger server demand tied to agentic AI workloads. The firm now models earnings power above $6 per share by 2030, up sharply from a prior $3-to-$4 range, and expects Intel CPU sales to top $40 billion by 2030, roughly 25% of a $170 billion addressable market. Wells Fargo moved the same week, lifting its target to $110 from $85. The foundry order got the headlines, but the upgrade that pushed price to $118 is being underwritten by datacenter CPUs.

The Catch

None of this is cheap optionality anymore. Intel is up roughly 210% year-to-date, on pace for its best annual showing since 1975, and this $118 print is the top of a V-shaped rebound off a June 5 low near $98. A $135 target on a stock that has already tripled is a momentum call layered on top of a fundamental one. The risks Arya himself flags are not small: competition from Arm-based and custom CPUs, a possible moderation in AI capital spending, and execution risk on the 18A and upcoming 14A nodes that the entire foundry and CPU thesis depends on. The $6 EPS figure is a 2030 number — at $118 you are paying up today for earnings that need four years and near-flawless manufacturing to materialize.