By Kelly Cloonan

Shares of Intel rose after Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said he expects strong demand for the company's server processors to continue this year.

The stock rose 6.2%, to $45.77, on Wednesday. Shares have more than doubled over the past year.

Zinsner said server demand picked up in the back half of last year, leading to unit growth of about mid-20% for the year. "I think it's going to be up again pretty meaningfully this year," he said at a Morgan Stanley conference on Wednesday.

Customers are starting to ask for long-term agreements, looking to lock in server supply on a three- to five-year basis, Zinsner said.

"That should tell you that there's legs to this," he said.

Zinsner said Intel could face challenges in meeting the growing demand, however, given supply shortages. Though many players in the industry saw signals of stronger demand in the latter half of last year, it takes several quarters before a ramp up in production would boost supply, he said. As a result, supply trends will likely improve coming out of the second quarter, he said.

"We feel pretty good that we'll be able to bring more and more supply online every quarter and things should have a relatively rapid improvement as we get through the year," he said.

He noted the industry is suffering from widespread shortages, including with memory and substrates.

"There's a lot of things that are short across the board that all have to get caught up as we progress through the year," he said.

Write to Kelly Cloonan at kelly.cloonan@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 04, 2026 14:12 ET (19:12 GMT)

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