Everyone seems critical of this sale as some sort of imploding canary for their impending financial doom but if they don't see a lucrative or competitive future

Everyone seems critical of this sale as some sort of imploding canary for their impending financial doom but if they don't see a lucrative or competitive future for this business than I don't think divesting from it is a bad idea, using the proceeds for buy backs effectively makes their business smaller whilst retaining the same inherent value. It goes against Wall St's grow-at-all-costs philosophy, but personally I think sitting on a war chest waiting for the next big opportunity is better than pouring investments in a low margin business playing catchup from 5th place. Personally I believe Intel needs some big wins as they're basically getting their lunch eaten from all sides. Fortunately they're still highly profitable which affords them a lot of opportunity for investments, if they can't do that their future may be dependent on others successes of their intelcapital.com arm, which worked well for Yahoo! who at the end, most of their value came from their Alibaba investment. [1] https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/nand-memory-news/ https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/nand-memory-news/