Thursday is looking like a great day to own stocks, and tech stocks in particular — especially tech stocks tied to autonomous cars. If you own shares of Mobileye (NASDAQ: MBLY) or Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) today, you have Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) to thank for it.
Oh, sure. A lot of stocks gaining today are gaining on the back of a 50-basis-point interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve yesterday. That's one big catalyst. But a second catalyst, and one specific to the self-driving cars industry, is the fact that Intel announced today that it has no plans to sell off its majority stake in Mobileye.
That news is behind the surprising strength in shares of Intel stock (up 3% through 11:10 a.m. ET), and in Alphabet (up 1.8%), and in Mobileye most of all — up 15.3%!
What Intel said about Mobileye
Earlier this month, both Intel and Mobileye got hit by rumors that the semiconductor giant was planning to sell off most of its 88% stake in Mobileye, which makes systems for machine vision in electric cars.
Today, Intel said the opposite is closer to truth. "We believe in the future of autonomous driving technology and in Mobileye's unique role as a leader in the development and deployment of advanced driver assistance systems," Reuters quoted the tech giant as saying. And assuming Intel is telling the truth, this means the company sees value in owning a piece of the self-driving cars industry.
That's good news for Mobileye investors, who now don't have to worry about a flood of their shares coming up for sale, depressing the share price even more than it's already fallen this year (73%). It should be good news for Alphabet, too, which announced plans in July to invest another $5 billion in its Waymo self-driving cars venture — despite reporting that Waymo cost it $1.1 billion in losses in Q2.
And if Intel is making the right call here in hanging on to Mobileye, it could even be good news for Intel.
Is Mobileye stock a buy?
Intel of course could really use some good news right about now, after reporting declining revenue and a $1.6 billion net loss (and $3.4 billion in cash burn) in its Q2 report. With less than $1 billion in trailing-12-month profit to support its $89 billion market capitalization, Intel's hope that Mobileye, which is also unprofitable but does produce free cash flow, will turn into a profit center in the future is a bet that had better pay off.
The good news is that it might.
Analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence don't think Mobileye will report generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) profits before 2026 at the earliest. However, the driverless car unit is already generating substantial free cash flow, with $435 million in cash profit expected next year. On a $9.4 billion market capitalization, that doesn't make Mobileye stock "cheap" exactly. But a price-to-free-cash-flow ratio of 22 isn't an unrealistic valuation. And with free cash flow expected to triple over the three years following 2025, Mobileye actually does look like an asset Intel should hang on to.
If you're looking for a good stock to buy, to invest in the driverless cars revolution, Mobileye stock could be it.