Weekly Briefing

Intel's $13.6B revenue, 41.0% non-GAAP gross margin, and $0.29 non-GAAP EPS were all above the high end of guidance. But the headline obscures the more interesting story: this was an ASP-led quarter. Client ASPs rose 16% and server ASPs rose 27% YoY while client units fell 13% and server units fell 5% — Intel sold less silicon for more money. The Q2 gross margin guide steps down to 39.0% non-GAAP, with memory and substrate input cost inflation cited as the primary drag. For procurement teams, the read-through is that silicon spend in 2H 2026 looks structurally higher even before factoring in any further AI infrastructure pull. Three claims management put on the table this quarter — CPU renaissance, foundry external traction, and Mobileye's competitive position — deserve to be tested against what the rest of the market is signaling.

SK Hynix reported KRW 52.58T (~$38B) in 1Q26 revenue (+60% QoQ) on flat DRAM bit growth. Mid-60% DRAM ASP expansion alone drove the quarter. Operating margin of 72% now exceeds TSMC's ~50% — the first time memory has out-earned the most advanced logic foundry. NAND bits fell 10% QoQ while ASPs rose mid-70%: the AI-inference eSSD inflection has finally arrived. The KRW 40.35T (~$29B) net profit is not a clean modeling baseline — KRW 11.5T (~$8B) of it is valuation gains and FX. The operational print is KRW 37.6T (~$27B). Balance sheet transformation matters more than the income statement: cash KRW 54.3T (~$39B), debt KRW 19.3T (~$14B), net cash KRW 35T (~$25B), and receivables ballooned from KRW 18.2T to 33.8T (~$13B → $24B) in one quarter.

TSMC reported $35.9B in 1Q26 revenue with a 66.2% gross margin — both beats — and raised full-year 2026 growth to above 30%. But the signal buried under the headlines is that TSMC is breaking its own rule against adding capacity to a mature-design node: a new N3 GIGAFAB in Tainan (HVM 1H27), Arizona Fab 2 repurposed to N3 (HVM 2H27), and Japan Fab 2 shifted from specialty to N3 (HVM 2028). HBM base dies were explicitly named as an N3 customer for the first time. The binding constraint, management confirmed under questioning, is clean room buildout — not EUV tool supply and not land.