UPDATE: Sterne Agee Reiterates Intel at Neutral on Foundry Strategy, Search for New CEO

In a report published by Sterne Agee, analyst Vijay Rakesh reiterated a Neutral rating and $18 price target on Intel

. Sterne Agee reported that, “While fissures in the AAPL-Samsung relationship have spawned opportunities along with INTC's manufacturing leadership and core-PC challenges, 3 things standout, 1) The INTC deal with Altera is a nonexclusive deal, which means INTC can now sign up other Communication FPGA customers for 14nm, 2) Foundry revenues will materialize more in 2015 onwards and 3) L-T Foundry post 2015 could get to 10% of revenues in the long run. One takeaway from the multiple conversations was the Foundry business is to drive more Equipment re-use or utilization of INTC's depreciated assets. Also some other candidates that sound attractive as foundry customers are Juniper, Cisco, ZTE, Huawei, and Apple among others. We believe a high accretive margin bogey for foundry products could limit the target market and upside.” Shares of Intel closed at $21.66 on Wednesday.