Key points
- What Intel shares did after Lip-Bu Tan bought
- How Tan's latest Intel purchase differs from August's
- What Tan's Form 4 doesn't explain
Intel (INTC) CEO Lip-Bu Tan bought 150,000 shares through a family trust on Nov. 2 at an average of $64.73, or about $9.7 million, according to a Form 4 filed Nov. 4 that appears on our insider-buying tracker. Intel closed at $59.97 that day, 7.4% below his average price. The shares were at $58.05 as of 2:43 p.m. ET on Nov. 4, about 10.3% below it.
It appears to be the first time since Tan became CEO in March 2025 that he has bought Intel stock on the market. He got his first shares as CEO directly from Intel, and he bought more in August at the price of Intel's stock offering.
What does the Form 4 show?
The purchase carries code P, which covers both open-market and private purchases, so the code alone doesn't settle where Tan bought. The Form 4 doesn't use the words "open market" either. It does report multiple trades at prices from $64.705 to $64.735, a range Intel traded in on Nov. 2, and it doesn't mention an offering or a sale by Intel. Those details point to purchases on the market.
The form doesn't indicate that the purchase was made under a 10b5-1 trading plan, a schedule an executive can set up in advance to trade automatically.
The form gives the date but not the time of day. Intel opened at $65.40 on Nov. 2. In five-minute price data for regular trading, the stock's high after about 10:35 a.m. ET was $64.43, below the bottom of Tan's range. If the trades took place during regular trading, that data suggests they came before then.
The trust held 1,464,669 Intel shares after the purchase, about 11% more than before. Tan also lists 16,471 shares held directly and 500 in a 401(k).
How is this different from his August purchase?
Tan's trust also bought 105,263 shares at $95 on Aug. 11, about $10 million, according to an earlier Form 4. Intel priced a $20 billion stock offering at $95 a share, and the prospectus says Tan and one of his family members agreed to buy $12 million of those shares at the offering price. The Form 4 doesn't mention the offering, but the $95 price matches.
His first purchase as CEO came directly from Intel. In March 2025, the trust acquired 1,043,406 shares at $23.96 each, about $25 million, under his offer letter.
The two 2026 purchases total 255,263 shares and about $19.7 million, an average of $77.21 a share by our calculations. At $58.05, those shares were worth about $14.8 million, or $4.9 million less than he paid. The August shares were down about 39%. The March 2025 shares were up about 142%.
What happened to Intel's stock before he bought?
Tan bought in the second trading session after Intel's third-quarter report. Intel's fourth-quarter forecast fell short of estimates on Oct. 29, and the shares dropped 28.6% the next day to $65.76. Intel lost 45.3% in October. The stock then fell another 8.8% on Nov. 2, the day of Tan's purchase.
His $64.73 average is about 32% below the $95 he paid in August.
What doesn't the Form 4 say?
A Form 4 gives the date, the size, and the price. It doesn't give Tan's reason or say whether he plans to buy more. Insider purchases tend to be a cleaner signal than sales, but the research on copying them is mixed, as I went through in a separate piece.
I also went through Intel's other Form 4s. The last purchase by anyone but Tan came in January, when Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner bought 5,882 shares at $42.50. The last reported sale came on May 29, when Naga Chandrasekaran, who runs Intel Foundry, sold 21,024 shares at an average of $118.28.
Both of Tan's 2026 purchases are on our insider-buying tracker, and new Intel filings show up on the INTC stock page.
