After an 11.7% rally on Wednesday, shares of the chipmaker retreated on Thursday as investors booked gains ahead of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings announcement scheduled for after the close. The recent surge has added nearly 50% to the stock’s value since January 1, driven by optimism around artificial-intelligence workloads, rumored new customers and public endorsements of the company’s foundry turnaround. Traders appear to be trimming positions to manage risk ahead of a results release that could reshape consensus views on the firm’s recovery trajectory.

Consensus forecasts compiled by Visible Alpha call for adjusted earnings per share of $0.09 on revenue of $13.41 billion, representing year-over-year declines of roughly 30% and 6%, respectively. Analysts at HSBC, KeyBanc and Wedbush expect the company to exceed those estimates, citing stronger-than-expected demand for its server CPUs in data centers. Options markets price in a post-earnings swing of up to 9% in either direction, underscoring the degree of uncertainty surrounding the upcoming results and the high stakes for the company’s turnaround narrative.

Market participants have grown increasingly optimistic about the company’s foundry operations following demonstrations of its 18A process reaching yields above 60%. Rumors that a major smartphone maker may allocate 15–20 million units of low-end M-series chips to the company’s fabs by 2027 have further bolstered sentiment. Meanwhile, hyperscale customers have reportedly sold out server-CPU allocations for the year, setting the stage for potential average selling-price increases of 10%–15% as organizations race to deploy new AI data centers.