Well, all my compilers use recursive descent for expressions, meaning the stack is used to maintain the current state. Whether you evaluate it while doing this or produce an IR is a trivial difference.
It might be a trivial difference but it's literally the thing that makes something a compiler. It should make sense. How a piece of software works doesn't make it a compiler or not; it's input and output of the software that defines it as a compiler. That's true of almost any broad category of software.
