AMD reports Q3 earnings

[iCyborg]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/am...uarter-outlook-2011-10-27?link=MW_latest_news

$1.69B revenue, $0.13 earnings per share, better than the (recently reduced) expectations. If only GF/TSMC wouldn't add to their problems...

Shares are up 5% after hours, and this after a day where AMD went 8.73% up. Though their shares are still low...

 

[IlllI]

when does q3 end? before or after bd launch?

 

[Lonyo]

Wow. A profit. Didn't realise they were already at that point.

 

[Arg Clin]

In a prepared statement, Chief Executive Rory Read pointed to “strong adoption” of the company’s Fusion chips, which combine core computing capabilities with graphics processing power.

Seems like the APU strategy might be working out quite well for AMD.

 

[hasu]

AMD is my favorite company for investment for they cause faster innovation in processor technology.

 

[Ultralight]

when does q3 end? before or after bd launch?

Before. Q4 is October-December. However, as has been pointed out their other offerings are actually doing quite well which is reflective in Q3 profit report.

 

[nyker96]

wait til the next quater report comes in and the full BD shit hits the fan.

 

[eternalone]

AMD is my favorite company for investment for they cause faster innovation in processor technology.

Lulz.

 

[Olikan]

^ like bulldozer is gonna change anything besides amd's ego

Highlights from press release:

35 percent sequential revenue increase in mobile business

Double digit revenue and unit shipment growth in emerging markets like China and India

Overall notebook share gains in retail at mainstream price points

Debt as of the end of the quarter was $2.1 billion

More than 60 percent sequential increase in mobile Accelerated Processor Unit (APU) shipments drives record mobile microprocessor revenue and unit shipments

 

[frozentundra123456]

AMD is my favorite company for investment for they cause faster innovation in processor technology.

Yea, if you had bought it at 40.00 per share a few years ago you would have made a mint!!

Edit: also, look what their great innovation brought---Bulldozer.

 

[sandorski]

wait til the next quater report comes in and the full BD shit hits the fan.

I don't think BD is going to affect the bottom line that much, either positively or negatively. The products doing well are likely to continue doing so and what BD replaces wasn't one of those products.

On top of that, BD is likely to Sell just as well as the Phenom2(at least once the Phenom2 supplies are sold off), despite the weakness of the BD line. A certain amount of people are going to buy BD anyway, regardless of the reviews, possibly being ignorant of the reviews even. Wouldn't be surprised if AMD is forced to drop prices on BD soon though, just to maintain enough Volume in sales.

 

[tatertot]

What's going to hit the fan is 2012, when GloFo stops eating the losses for the horrendous yields on 32nm products, and AMD gets them instead.

Note to CEO Rory: Stop with the buzzword bingo and never, ever use the word "execution" more than once in a sentence. It was so bad I had to stop listening.

Did they explain where Valencia is?

 

[StinkyPinky]

Sometimes I forget how small AMD is. Revenue of $1.7B is comparatively tiny

 

[Concillian]

wait til the next quater report comes in and the full BD shit hits the fan.

People who think BD will really affect their bottom line do not understand the industry.

It's a server CPU that they threw out with the FX label to suck up a little extra revenue. I don't think it will hurt them as much as people here seem to think it does. I haven't seen server benchmarks, but they were already bleeding server marketshare. The low single threaded performance was known for a long while. It was clear for months before launch it was not going to be very competitive with SB from that standpoint, and since most of what people do is low thread count, it would never be competitive on the desktop enthusiast level except for (potentially) a very small percentage of people who do massively multithreaded computations at home.

Look at how Brazos and Llano turned them from net loss to profit all by pretty much completely ignoring end users who buy $150+ CPUs.

We are not AMDs target customer. The days of PC CPU performance being important are gone, so there's no reason to impress in this market segment.
It's a different world now, and AMD has changed it's focus to adapt to that as it faces ever growing challenges keeping up with Intel. It has to pick it's battles, and it has ceded $150+ enthusiast chips to Intel in order to go after marketshare where it's more reliable (server and mobile mostly, but they're happy to get some low end desktop revenue from their mobile targeted Llano, just like they're happy to get whatever revenue they can from people who buy the FX chips.)

 

[iXombie]

AMD is my favorite company for investment for they cause faster innovation in processor technology.

Faster than the Tick/Tock strategy?

On topic: With the Llano products I'm not surpised about the profits. I just helped a friend build a little web streaming box for about $250 USD and it was really cool.

 

[podspi]

We are not AMDs target customer. The days of PC CPU performance being important are gone, so there's no reason to impress in this market segment.
It's a different world now, and AMD has changed it's focus to adapt to that as it faces ever growing challenges keeping up with Intel. It has to pick it's battles, and it has ceded $150+ enthusiast chips to Intel in order to go after marketshare where it's more reliable (server and mobile mostly, but they're happy to get some low end desktop revenue from their mobile targeted Llano, just like they're happy to get whatever revenue they can from people who buy the FX chips.)

While I don't disagree, it was first:

"They're not focusing on $1000 super-chips, nobody really buys them"

Then

"People who buy $300 CPUs are in the minority. AMD is focusing on volume"

And now we're talking about them ceding $150 CPUs?


Again, I don't disagree with you in any way, but their inability to produce a high-end CPU, while being pushed farther down the market (with 2B transistors!) is troubling for me, because what type of performance do you expect a $100 Intel CPU to have by 2014?


And honestly, if high-volume, small, energy efficient chips are the future, why hasn't AMD taken out an ARM license and started developing an SoC? They should be able to do what nVidia is doing... better.

 

[frozentundra123456]

While I don't disagree, it was first:

"They're not focusing on $1000 super-chips, nobody really buys them"

Then

"People who buy $300 CPUs are in the minority. AMD is focusing on volume"

And now we're talking about them ceding $150 CPUs?


Again, I don't disagree with you in any way, but their inability to produce a high-end CPU, while being pushed farther down the market (with 2B transistors!) is troubling for me, because what type of performance do you expect a $100 Intel CPU to have by 2014?


And honestly, if high-volume, small, energy efficient chips are the future, why hasn't AMD taken out an ARM license and started developing an SoC? They should be able to do what nVidia is doing... better.

I would tend to agree with you, but my take on AMD would be more harsh than yours.
AMD fans just seem to disregard whatever market segment they are not competitive in and say, well that is not important. I bet that if Bulldozer had met it targets and beat or matched sandy bridge, they would have been shouting "AMD is competitive in the high end again". And it will be interesting to see how Llano and Trinity compete against Ivy bridge at 22 nm in the performance per power metric.

 

[podspi]

Trinity is the product to watch. AMD's APU strategy seems to be a good one (and is working), but it isn't sustainable unless they can refresh their products effectively.

On HardOCP, I saw a poster who got rid of an Athlon 631 (one of the gimped Llanos) for an FX-4100 complaining that the FX-4110 was slower than the Athlon. That doesn't bode well for the Trinity refresh. But maybe we'll end up surprised.

 

[StrangerGuy]

While I don't disagree, it was first:

"They're not focusing on $1000 super-chips, nobody really buys them"

Then

"People who buy $300 CPUs are in the minority. AMD is focusing on volume"

And now we're talking about them ceding $150 CPUs?


Again, I don't disagree with you in any way, but their inability to produce a high-end CPU, while being pushed farther down the market (with 2B transistors!) is troubling for me, because what type of performance do you expect a $100 Intel CPU to have by 2014?


And honestly, if high-volume, small, energy efficient chips are the future, why hasn't AMD taken out an ARM license and started developing an SoC? They should be able to do what nVidia is doing... better.

I can't believe AMD apologetics are still using that lame old "no one buys CPUs more expensive than X dollars" argument. It's one thing cheaper CPUs sells much more but it's an another thing when you have NOTHING to sell at $300+ at all.

 

[pm]

Did anyone hear the conference call, or does anyone have a link to the transcript of the conference call?

Edit: nevermind. I found it. http://seekingalpha.com/article/303...sses-q3-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript

 

[quest55720]

I am glad to see they turned a profit this quarter. It was well deserved LLANO and Brazos are very good to excellent products. Just hoping the follow up products in 2012 are just as good.

 

[Concillian]

I can't believe AMD apologetics are still using that lame old "no one buys CPUs more expensive than X dollars" argument. It's one thing cheaper CPUs sells much more but it's an another thing when you have NOTHING to sell at $300+ at all.

It's not apologizing for AMD, it's pointing out what should be obvious to anyone who's been paying attention to what's been happening over the last 5 years or so.

They tried to compete straight up and failed for a few years after Intel's Core architecture. What was the management supposed to do? Run the business into the ground and go bankrupt? Sorry guys, time to turn out the lights!

No, they had to make decisions on what to tailor their chips for when a general, all around good CPU was clearly not possible with their R&D and foundry options. They had to look at specific markets that suited their strengths, trim down their costs and target those markets in a way that Intel wasn't going to target them in order to create a niche they could survive in.

It wasn't done so much as a winning strategy as a strategy necessitated for survival. The alternative was stay the course with losses, pile on more debt and hope for an accidental home run from their R&D and / or a major blunder from Intel.

And now they have turned the ship around and are at least successful on a business level by being profitable. It has been a significant change in the way they do business. It's unfortunate for enthusiasts that we don't have a '2 horse race' anymore at the high end, but that's how it is. They haven't really won anything as much as bought themselves some extra time.

I've never apologized for BD. I knew it wasn't tailored for my usage since early engineering samples showed poor single threaded performance. With CA power bills, I value performance per watt and AMD wasn't expected to jump the even more significant gap that exists there. Don't mistake my pointing out of how business works and slapping some kids with their head in the clouds back to reality as being some kind of AMD fanatic, apologist or whatever you want to call it.

 

[piesquared]

While I don't disagree, it was first:

"They're not focusing on $1000 super-chips, nobody really buys them"

Then

"People who buy $300 CPUs are in the minority. AMD is focusing on volume"

And now we're talking about them ceding $150 CPUs?


Again, I don't disagree with you in any way, but their inability to produce a high-end CPU, while being pushed farther down the market (with 2B transistors!) is troubling for me, because what type of performance do you expect a $100 Intel CPU to have by 2014?


And honestly, if high-volume, small, energy efficient chips are the future, why hasn't AMD taken out an ARM license and started developing an SoC? They should be able to do what nVidia is doing... better.

I don't think they are getting pushed down the market, they are making huge gains in that market they are aiming at which is a pretty important market for revenue. and are introducing some pretty cool new technology in the next few months which look to revolve around mobile. The big one's are Trinity on the APU side and GCN on the GPU side.

AMD are very much on the cutting edge of semiconductor design, i'd expect the combination of AMD and ATi to really throw a punch, in the not too distant future.

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/10/27/amd-far-future-prototype-gpu-pictured/

 

[piesquared]

I would tend to agree with you, but my take on AMD would be more harsh than yours.
AMD fans just seem to disregard whatever market segment they are not competitive in and say, well that is not important. I bet that if Bulldozer had met it targets and beat or matched sandy bridge, they would have been shouting "AMD is competitive in the high end again".

That wouldn't change the fact that they had big gains in the market that counts, mobile. Especially the part they are betting on the most, the APU. Looks like AMD got it right.

And it will be interesting to see how Llano and Trinity compete against Ivy bridge at 22 nm in the performance per power metric.

It sure will

 

[OCGuy]

Bad times ahead for AMD. BD was about as abysmal as it gets.