By Max A. Cherney
(Reuters) -Intel received the $5.7 billion in cash on Wednesday night as part of the deal U.S. President Donald Trump negotiated for a 10% stake in the struggling chipmaker, finance chief David Zinsner said at an investor conference on Thursday.
The stake in Intel announced by the U.S. government last week is an incentive for Intel to retain control of its contract manufacturing business, or foundry, Zinsner said.
As part of the deal, the government negotiated an additional 5% warrant, should Intel cease to own more than 51% of its foundry operation.
“I don’t think there’s a high likelihood that we would take our stake below 50%,” Zinsner said. “So ultimately, I would expect (the warrant) to expire worthless.”
Also on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the deal between Intel and the U.S. was “still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce. The t’s are still being crossed. The i’s are still being dotted. These – you know – it’s very much still under discussion.”
Intel declined to comment.
Leavitt said that the president proposed the deal and that the Commerce secretary was working on putting it into action.
The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker raised $2 billion from SoftBank Group in the form of an equity stake earlier this month, and has vowed to slash its staff to 75,000 as part of CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s effort to turn around the company. The CEO’s plans have included seeking to find big customers for its manufacturing business and cleave off businesses he does not view as crucial.
Intel has taken steps to separate its contract chip manufacturing arm, or foundry, from its design business. Foundries like TSMC make chips for design companies such as Nvidia and AMD that do not own manufacturing operations.
Intel has previously said it could take outside investment in the foundry unit, and it has created a separate management board to govern it.
Should Intel take outside investors for the foundry business, Zinsner said the company was leaning toward taking a strategic investor versus a financial one. But Intel is “years away from that.”
In July, Intel disclosed that the future of its foundry business depended on securing a big customer for its next-generation manufacturing process known as 14A. Failing that, it could get out of the foundry business altogether.
On Thursday, Zinsner downplayed the potential risk to its foundry. “The lawyers are always looking for areas where we should be elaborating in terms of our risks,” he said.
Intel is focused on landing a big customer next year but is committed to maintaining “financial discipline” while developing the next-generation manufacturing technology and technique, Zinsner said. The investment in 14A for only Intel’s internal use is too great to provide an “appropriate” return on investment for shareholders, he said.
Intel shares were up 0.2% at $24.90 on Thursday afternoon.
(Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Alan Barona and Matthew Lewis)
