Intel is back in favor on Wall Street.
The stock ripped higher on Friday after Morgan Stanley upgraded the chipmaker, giving a boost to the stock and extending its gains on the year.
The firm said its bullish call was based on the company's permanent placement of Robert Swan as CEO, as well as a number of other fundamental developments, for its new price target of $64, a 21 percent rise from Friday's closing of $52.49.
Piper Jaffray's senior technical research analyst Craig Johnson, who's a fan of the semiconductor space, also believes the stock is heading to new highs. Johnson's charting reveals shares of Intel have maintained its uptrend over the past couple of years and are "setting up to retest the old highs at around $60."
"Usually when you get to the old highs in a market as strong as it is right now, you're going to push through," Johnson said Friday on CNBC's "Trading Nation." "You're going to push through, so we would be a buyer of the stock here and anticipate a retest of those highs."
Intel shares are less than 10 percent from its all-time high of $57.60 from last June.
Despite the vote of confidence from Morgan Stanley, Mark Tepper of Strategic Wealth Partners believes Intel looks more like a value trap. Tepper notes that while its data center business is a positive, fiercer competition is a major headwind.
"Intel is seeing weaker sales in those server chips and that's because all their competitors are eating their lunch," Tepper said on "Trading Nation" on Friday. "If they're not crushing it in the data center group I have very little interest in the computing side of the business, which makes up 53 percent of sales, so I'd be looking elsewhere."
Intel reported 13 percent revenue growth for fiscal 2018 with 20 percent growth in its data-centric businesses.
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