Intel’s $250 Billion Rally Slams Into a Potential Earnings Wall

Intel Corp. has been one of the hottest stocks in the market over the past 12 months, soaring 230% to the highest price since the dot-com bubble. But the rally is facing a potential roadblock in the company’s first-quarter earnings report due after the close Thursday.

The shares have been on a roll since last year, spurred by the US government’s $8.9 billion investment in return for a stake in the once-struggling chipmaker. Since then, it has also paid $14 billion to buy back half of a plant in Ireland that it had previously sold to Apollo Global Management, joined Elon Musk’s semiconductor manufacturing project Terafab and received a commitment from Alphabet Inc.’s Google to use its processors.