We attended Intel’s Vision partner event this week and came away with a better idea of the company’s prospects. Our sense is that Intel is never going to be the company it once was, and that is not a bad thing. At least it does not have to be a bad thing.

After years of facing existential questions there are unquestionably signs that Intel is on much firmer footing. They still face significant challenges, but the company is moving in the right direction on a number of fronts. In the 2010’s the company grossly underinvested in advancing its manufacturing capabilities, and at the same time embedded a culture that can politely be described as “resting on its laurels”. With Pat Gelsinger as CEO and his 5 nodes in 4 years, the company has re-established its manufacturing process capabilities, and could theoretically reclaim a leadership position in coming years.

As we often point out, Intel faces three sequential problems – fix manufacturing, design products that customers want, and fill their fabs with foundry business to keep the whole cycle moving. In the past few weeks, the company announced progress on all these fronts. Their process technology roadmap looks solid and shows signs of competitiveness. They launched a host of new products which are good enough to keep the company in the conversation. And they broke out results for Intel Foundry (IF), an important step into setting up that entity for the path to success. So of course their stock is down almost 10% on the week.

We understand why the Street does not like Intel’s news. Their new products are not going to overtake Nvidia any time soon. The timelines on recovery in IF extend beyond the length of the average Wall Street job tenure. Google announced its Axion CPU, further eroding the x86 TAM. So at one level things do not look great.

That being said, we think the Street, and many in the industry, have the wrong set of expectations for Intel. The company went away for a while and have come back to a new world. We can call that world AI, or the age of accelerated compute, or just the steady beat of change in technology. Whatever. The point is that Intel is no longer the dominant, 90% share vendor to the data center. They now have dozens of CPU competitors and are behind in AI. Anyone expecting them to turn all of that around in a few years has not really thought through the mental map of the industry. So comparing Intel of today, to Intel of the past makes no sense. We know this is going to make some people uncomfortable, both outside and inside the company, but we also know many people who would agree with it, even see the necessity in looking at the company for what it is now.

So instead of thinking about Intel’s past glories, Intel should be viewed as one of the leading vendors for the data center. Nvidia leads right now, but there are many reasons to question the depth and longevity of that clear leadership. Intel is also one of only three companies on the planet capable of making advanced semiconductors, and the only one not based in a geopolitical hotspot. They have immense software capabilities, and extensive, long-standing relationships with all the key equipment makers and systems integrators. This is a formidable company by any objective measure.

Of course they are not out of the woods yet. They still face those three challenges and a very difficult market. But we have always said the biggest struggle facing Intel is the internal one, to turn its culture around. And on this front, the most positive thing we took away from their event was the many very frank, very open conversations we had with executives who are keenly aware of the hill the company has to climb. So we get why the investment case for the company is not compelling yet, but if we look at the company objectively, without referencing the past, its position looks much more interesting.