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Intel has the biggest addressable market it's ever seen, says company's interim CEO

Key Points
  • Intel's interim CEO and permanent CFO, Bob Swan, shares his take on the technology giant's future with CNBC's Jim Cramer.
  • Intel has redefined itself, and now, its potential end markets are broader than ever, Swan says.
Intel has its biggest addressable market ever: Interim CEO
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Intel has its biggest addressable market ever: Interim CEO

Intel's total addressable market has grown significantly as the company has diversified away from the personal computer business and made strategic acquisitions in areas like autonomous driving, interim CEO Bob Swan told CNBC on Thursday.

"This is the biggest served market this company has had in its history," Swan, the company's permanent CFO, told Jim Cramer in a "Mad Money" interview.

Swan, who took over for former CEO Brian Krzanich after he left the company for a policy violation, said that Intel used to think it had 90 percent market share "in a market that had relatively slow growth," the PC space.

"In that world, the opportunities to expand and bring our technologies to new places gets somewhat constrained by the way we define ourselves," he said. "The way we've been defining ourselves over the last couple years is a $300 billion [total addressable market]. We don't have 90 percent share, we have 25 percent share."

This renewed vision is a result of Intel's push into the realm of data management, the internet of things and the growing autonomous driving sector, as highlighted by its 2017 acquisition of self-driving tech specialist Mobileye, Swan said.

"We have this significant wind at our back on this need for data: to store it, to process it, to analyze it, to retrieve it. And with that, our opportunities are as big as they have ever been ... both organically and acquisitively," he said. "With acquisitions like Mobileye and Altera, the set of capabilities we have are just much broader today and we see the market as big as it's ever been and we're very optimistic about the prospects for this company going forward."

But Swan, who has been CFO of Intel since 2016, doesn't want the permanent CEO job, he told Cramer.

"No, I do not. I love my day job as the CFO," Swan said. "We believe this is the best open job on the planet, and the management team has told the board, 'Take you time, find somebody great, in the meantime, we'll be just fine kind of running the company.' It's a very exciting time for us."

Shares of Intel gained 1.15 percent in Thursday's trading session, settling at $48.56.

Watch Bob Swan's full interview here:

Intel has the biggest addressable market it's ever seen, says company's interim CEO
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Intel has the biggest addressable market it's ever seen, says company's interim CEO

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