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Shares of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) trade near $101 as of this writing, up about 175% in 2026. The company's stock is also worth over five times the $18 or so it closed at in April 2025 -- its lowest close in the last decade.
But zoom out to 10 years, and the picture isn't nearly as pretty. A $10,000 investment in Intel in mid-October 2016, with all dividends reinvested, is worth around $33,700 now. The same $10,000 in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT:VOO), an index fund that tracks the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC), turned into about $42,900.
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So even after nearly tripling this year, Intel stock still trails just owning the market. And I think the reasons help show how much of the turnaround investors are already paying for.
Intel closed just above $37 on Oct. 12, 2016, and it finished 2025 at $36.90. In short, the share price went nowhere for over nine years, and dividends were the only return shareholders had to show for it.
The stock wasn't always behind. At the end of 2019, the $10,000 stake was worth around $17,500, ahead of the index fund's $16,100 or so. But by the end of 2022, it had dropped to about $8,500, while the same amount in the fund had doubled to about $20,100. At the stock's bottom in April 2025, the Intel stake was down to around $6,000. And when 2025 ended, it was worth about $12,300, versus about $37,300 for the fund.
So around 90% of Intel's 10-year gain has come in under 10 months.
The business went backward over that span, too. Intel's revenue rose from $59.4 billion in 2016 to a record $79.0 billion in 2021 -- and then slid to $52.9 billion in 2025, less than the company pulled in nine years before.
During most of the decade, a rising dividend at least lifted shareholders' returns. Intel's quarterly payout topped out at $0.365 per share in 2022. But the company cut it to $0.125 in February 2023 and suspended it entirely starting with the fourth quarter of 2024.
Those reinvested dividends still make up around $6,400 of today's $33,700. Without them, the $10,000 would be worth about $27,300.
The index fund, of course, still pays one, yielding around 1%. Intel pays nothing, and I doubt that changes soon.
Yes, the business is improving fast. Intel's second-quarter revenue climbed 25% year over year to $16.1 billion, accelerating from 7% growth in the first quarter. And non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share came in at $0.42, versus a loss of $0.10 a year earlier. That one quarter matched the $0.42 Intel earned in all of 2025, which followed an adjusted loss of $0.13 a share in 2024.
But the Intel of 2016 earned much more. Adjusted earnings per share were $2.72 that year. Even four quarters like the second quarter would come to just $1.68, and management's July outlook for the third quarter (which Intel reports on Oct. 29) was $0.38.
What jumps out at me is how much more investors now pay for those earnings. At around $37 in mid-October 2016, shares traded at about 14 times that year's adjusted earnings. Today, buyers are paying about 48 times the earnings expected for 2027.
This year's run, then, arguably has less to do with what Intel earns today than with what investors expect it to earn a few years out. If those profits show up late or come in lower, the stock might lose a big part of its gains.
For the 10-year stake to draw even with the index fund, shares would have to climb about 27%, to roughly $129. They've been there before. Intel set a record close of $140.94 on June 22, when the stake was briefly ahead of the fund, and the stock is down 28% since.
Overall, I think Intel's turnaround is showing up in its numbers. But the stock price seems to assume years of further progress, and Intel shareholders have already seen how long the wait can be when the business stumbles.
With shares priced at around 48 times 2027's expected earnings and paying no dividend, I'd rather own the index fund here.
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Intel Stock Has Nearly Tripled in 2026. A $10,000 Stake From 2016 Still Trails the S&P 500. was originally published by The Motley Fool
