Sorry, you don't appear to understand how stocks actually work.
The market cap of a company is an estimate of its value. The value includes things like current assets, expected present value of future profits, and so on. If it pays out $X, to first order effects, investors have $X more money, the company has $X less in assets, and so is worth $X less than it was. This is literally a redistribution of current market value back to investors.
At the level of a stock, the result is that a dividend of $Y will normally DROP the price of the stock by $Y. This is the exact opposite of "inflating" it.
Now I said to first order. What would be a second order factor? Well a large part of the value of a company comes from an estimate of the present value of future returns. Paying a dividend is literally an admission on the part of management that they do not think that they can spend the money and get returns matching other investments (ie the stock market). And therefore it is in the interests of investors that the money be returned. If this admission comes as a surprise to investors, this may change expectations of the future and drop the stock price even further. But unless the money being returned is from an unexpected windfall, the second order effects are unlikely to be positive either.
As an investor you should rightly see the fact of the money being returned as a bad sign for the future. However if you understood the chip industry deeply, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Your theory and preference appears to be that Intel should roll the dice on a Hail Mary to have a chance of a revival that keeps your losses from being permanent. But given the headwinds that they face, returning money and winding down operations in an orderly fashion may well give the best possible returns for investors. Which is what management appears to have concluded.
Hence return money that they can return, cut overhead with a layoff, and expect more of the same going forward. Anyone who invests in Intel expecting them to do anything else is probably throwing good money after bad.
The market cap of a company is an estimate of its value. The value includes things like current assets, expected present value of future profits, and so on. If it pays out $X, to first order effects, investors have $X more money, the company has $X less in assets, and so is worth $X less than it was. This is literally a redistribution of current market value back to investors.
At the level of a stock, the result is that a dividend of $Y will normally DROP the price of the stock by $Y. This is the exact opposite of "inflating" it.
Now I said to first order. What would be a second order factor? Well a large part of the value of a company comes from an estimate of the present value of future returns. Paying a dividend is literally an admission on the part of management that they do not think that they can spend the money and get returns matching other investments (ie the stock market). And therefore it is in the interests of investors that the money be returned. If this admission comes as a surprise to investors, this may change expectations of the future and drop the stock price even further. But unless the money being returned is from an unexpected windfall, the second order effects are unlikely to be positive either.
As an investor you should rightly see the fact of the money being returned as a bad sign for the future. However if you understood the chip industry deeply, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Your theory and preference appears to be that Intel should roll the dice on a Hail Mary to have a chance of a revival that keeps your losses from being permanent. But given the headwinds that they face, returning money and winding down operations in an orderly fashion may well give the best possible returns for investors. Which is what management appears to have concluded.
Hence return money that they can return, cut overhead with a layoff, and expect more of the same going forward. Anyone who invests in Intel expecting them to do anything else is probably throwing good money after bad.