Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, September 17th, and I'm your host Kim Khan.

Our top story so far.

Wall Street weighed in on big developments for Intel, including an update on its foundry

plans.

Geebank Capital Markets analyst John Vinn said the announcements,

including the decision to pause construction on plans in Germany and Poland,

were mostly about cost cutting rather than returning to growth.

Nonetheless, he was very encouraged by the updates, as he believes it shows Intel's management

is being proactive about the inputs that can control largely costs.

While Intel said it would manufacture chips for Amazon Web Services, Bank of America

analyst Vivic Aria said the announcement may not be as impressive as it sounds initially.

The AWS Wynne sounds impressive that Intel has already been supplying AWS with

CPUs for a long time so customization isn't exactly something new.

While the AOA fabric networking win on 18A will probably matter only for calendar year 2026

while competing against tough Ethernet switch incumbency from Broadcom and others, he said.

The bull case for Intel is that it will be able to close the manufacturing

gap between it and Taiwan Semiconductor and deliver a customer experience that enables companies

like Apple, Amd, and Avidia to easily choose it over the competition.

But that is likely to take a long time to realize, Evercore's Mark Lepassus says.

We view the developments as incremental positives, but remain in line rated until there is increased visibility into the success of its foundry business.

On the economic front, retail sales unexpectedly nudged up 0.1% in August,

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