AMD third-quarter loss less than expected
Advanced Micro Devices posted a third-quarter loss of $128 million, lower than Wall Street projections, while also reporting revenue that beat expectations.
The loss, at 18 cents a share, compares with a loss of $134 million, or 22 cents a share, for the same period last year. Analysts had expected a loss of 42 cents a share.
Revenue was $1.4 billion, an 18 percent increase over the second quarter of this year, while falling 22 percent compared to the third quarter of 2008. Forecasts had called for only $1.3 billion in revenue.
"There was strength in notebooks and China," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and CEO, speaking during the company's earnings conference call on Thursday afternoon. He added that there is "an increased focus on small form factor" laptops at AMD and that upcoming inexpensive, thin laptops based on AMD processors should be priced lower than Intel-based offerings. And Meyer said AMD will broaden its processor offerings in this area going into the holiday season.
Meyer also spoke to AMD's future 32-nanometer silicon. Products codenamed "Fusion" that combine the graphics function with the main processor will be based on 32-nanometer technology and ship in the second half of 2010, Meyer said.
AMD is currently moving most of its production to 45-nanometer-based processors. Intel, on the other hand, will begin to move to 32-nanometer by the end of this year. Generally, the small the geometry, the faster and more power-efficient the chip is.
Addressing graphics processing units (GPUs), Meyer said that its recently-introduced 5800 series products have been well received but that the average selling prices of GPUs were down compared to the prior quarter and are still below central processing units or CPUs, which are higher.
"Growth in microprocessor and graphics unit shipments drove an 18 percent sequential revenue increase, while improved factory utilization rates, higher microprocessor average selling price, and an increase in 45 (nanometer) product shipments resulted in a gross margin improvement from the prior quarter," Meyer said in a statement.
AMD expects its product company (non-manufacturing-related) revenue to be up modestly for the fourth quarter of 2009.
AMD was the world's second-largest seller of microprocessors in the second quarter of 2009 with an 11.9 percent share of global revenue behind market-leader Intel, according to market researcher iSuppli.
Updated at 3:30 p.m. PDT: adding comments from earnings conference call.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
But when you divide the performance by their price, picture looks completely different.
E.g. I still manage pretty well on my 4yo AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (@2.2GHz).
but AMD has better power consumption on the server side and they have much lower prices than Intel on the consumer side
- by dlauber October 15, 2009 3:06 PM PDT
- Once again the illogic of the stock market rules and AMD's stock barely moves. As many experts note, the stock market is a lousy economic indicator. And as I continue to observe, it's a play toy for the very rich who manipulate the stock market based on whether or not a company's results meet expectations -- not whether the results are healthy or not.
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- by Philips October 15, 2009 3:23 PM PDT
- If public company fails to execute, its shareholders might decide to restructure it. That's what for stock market is an indicator.
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(11 Comments)In one respect AMD should be suffering -- CPUs, getting its butt kicked by Intel. An another respect AMD should be kicking butt -- GPUs, with cards built on its video chips kicking NVIDIA's butt. But the market cares not about that -- just whether the third quarter results exceed expectations which clearly were speculative at best.
What a bizarro world the stock market is.
As long as company has stable product line - shared going to be OK.
When company does not have stable product line - this is where AMD right now is - proper execution (minimization of costs, diversification, control over losses) is a must for the company to live long to see the day.