We've been reading about quarterly losses for years now. It'll be a sad day indeed when they close up shop. I'd hate to see them go out of business, maybe some one will buy them out.
If someone wanted to buy them out, they would have already. Right now it's not a matter of if AMD will go out of businesses, it's just a matter of when. Their financial situation is not sustainable and is not improving.
Intel is still a de facto monopoly in the CPU world. And there is nothing on the horizon to suggest this will change any time soon. ARM chips are still a niche product, and even though they do have ample performance to satisfy a good part of the desktop and mobile PC market, "somehow" that is not happening. I suppose this has to do with intel's long running practice of sneaky anti-competitive behavior. At the kind of margins ARM chips are selling, I guess their makers simply don't have the cash to buyoff OEMs.
Compare the unit numbers between x86 and ARM. Intel is not a monopoly in the CPU business. For instance 3.5 billion ARM chips were shipped in Q4 2014 compared to 81 million for all PC shipments. Tack on server and x86 mobile. They may hit 150 million units in Q4 between Intel and AMD.
Intel is effectively a monopoly in some very key areas. Server and laptop mobile businesses. If you look at the prices of server chips, they are out of control. $3000 each for a 2P server in CPU alone. Intel has been competing against itself in the server CPU market for a couple of years now. That would happen in the laptop and desktop market too without AMD. I think the laptop market is only one AMD is close to competing in.
AMD gives us no solid reason to think Zen will be any different than any other underperforming CPU launch they have had in recent years. We can expect to hear "it's a good product if it came out a year and half ago".
AMD is not competition to Intel, you know, competition implies the actual ability to compete, and AMD cannot. AMD just creates the illusion for competition in the x86 market, thus it is needed and will not go down.
Intel has ruined AMD for over a decade using illegal anticompetitive practices, and has reduced AMD to a crippled, impotent, pseudo competitor, put right there where Intel needs it to be. The last several generations of Intel CPUs have barely improved on performance, absent a competitor Intel is taking its sweet time, being careful to ensure it doesn't pull ahead too much to end AMD and lose its "competition".
AMD doesn't compete with Intel, it just has to do with the scraps Intel leaves for it, because the profit margins aren't worth Intel's effort. AMD is as much competition to Intel as maggots are competition to lions, just because they feed on the same carcass doesn't make them competition, the maggots are there to clear out what the lions won't be bothered with.
3.5 billion ARM chips? That has got to include microcontrollers, which do not even go in the CPU category.
Those numbers don't mean anything, seeing how 90% of the PC systems come with intel chips, if they have 90% of the market, I'd say they well qualify for a monopoly.
Quote: No. Monopolies are perfectly legal, even under Sherman. What is illegal is using a monopoly or trust (A 'trust', in Sherman is what we would today typically call a cartel) to manipulate price and availability of a product or service.
The governments decision to break up AT&T, for example, was based not on the fact that it was a monopoly, but on the allegation that AT&T was using its monopoly position to artificially hike prices and keep prospective competitors out of the market.
People don't realize that there are monopolies everywhere. Most of your utilities come from a single company. The government keeps a leash on them to make sure they aren't jacking up prices just because.
As much as intel needs AMD as a facade to hide their monopoly, AMD simply cannot sustain for much longer losing 100M+ per quarter. Eventually they will go bankrupt. Someone may buy them out, but there are issues with the x86 license from intel that will prevent an aquisition from being able to produce CPU's. This also would make nvidia a monopoly since no AMD means no more competition on any products. Prices will skyrocket and with the complexity of creating cpu and gpu components, there no chance of a new startup ever happening that would provide any competition, so once AMD is gone, the computer industry will be at the mercy of Intel, and the gaming industry at the mercy of nvidia with no chance for change happening again.
AMD is always losing money. The last 10 years they only have 2 in the green. AMD keeps losing money, and quite frankly to me it is a mystery how come it is still alive and where does this money come from. Either than have captured a family of leprechauns or someone is paying to keep it alive. Note the numbers:
Since 1999 AMD's business has resulted in a loss of about 8.5 billion $. It has also lost its fabs, and is now worth a fraction of what they overpaid for ATI.
It is quite clear that AMD has not and will not make money. The reasonable thing would be to terminate it, and yet it keeps on going and burning money, and my guess is the reason for this is no other than to hide Intel's monopoly.
Enthusiasts have been waiting for the resurgence of a competitive AMD CPU and are placing their hopes in Zen. But enthusiasts are but a small segment. We may view Zen as a potential saving grace that doesn't mean it will magically transform AMD to a profitable corporation.
AMD only worth $1,5B. It's intel's / microsfot / apple poket change for a quarter. Intel can't buy them because their X86 licence terms from the 80s prevent them to. There must always be 2 x86 companies, until one dies. Nobody else wants to buy them, cause everybody thinks PC is dead.
I think someone would buy them out, but they haven't bottomed out to where it would make sense. I think potentials buyers are waiting for a bankruptcy filing.
I'd be interested to see what the CPU and GPU dollars look like separately. Basically we know the CPU division is not profitable, but the GPU may or may not be. If I had to guess I would say the GPU business was profitable, but not in the same way Nvidia is. I would guess the CPU is really dragging down the GPU business numbers.
Simply put, AMD effed up when quitting the attempt for x86 competitiveness with no real thing to fall back on. I agree with JTaylor below. I think AMD's businesses will continue on in some fashion, but I'm not sure it will with the AMD name.
Speaking of GPUs, I can see someone (Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, other) buying the GPU division for the IPs alone. Similar to what Google did with Motorola a few years ago.
lol you really need to get more of a clue. This is the first time in many quarters when it's not bad, yet you think it's bad and worse news. On quarter they had solid growth in both segments. (and btw the Intel ASP numbers are distorted by the way they accounted for contra revenue - they had negative revenue on tablets while in Q3 a combination of lower tabs volumes and lower% of tabs receiving contra revenue distorted the revenue and ASP). Margins for AMD were 23% but the inventory write-down impact was 6% so excluding that they were at 29%, up from 25% in Q2 and as expected. It's their first quarter in years with mildly good news. They have 3 more quarters to go and then in the second half of 2016 we'll see what new custom designs they got and what Zen can do. For now Q3 and Q4 are ok and that JV gets them a bit more cash for the short term.
I don't see how anyone can see this as good news. Q2->Q3 uptick in topline revenue is good but it doesn't change the fact that it's down 46% YoY and they are continuing to lose more money (net revenue/operating income is more important than topline revenue), ASP's are going down, and their market share is shrinking. I mean, they are selling off parts of the business to raise cash and losing key talent.
We all want to see a competitive, healthy AMD and watch Zen return them to profitably, but don't fool yourself that this is "Good News" in some way. At best, it's "Not Horribly Bad News"
I think the bottom line is we have had the PC -> mobile form factor transition. AMD did not make it and worse, is failing at their old business. Intel probably will not make the transition either. At any rate, Intel competition is no longer AMD, it is ARM licensees. Intel though can still choose to make ARM chips. AMD is just going to fail and the only part anyone gives a damn about, ATI, will be purchased by someone during bankruptcy.
A reduction in revenues by 26% compared to this quarter in the previous year doesn't seem like ANY kind of good news to me.
Now that your services are no longer required as an investment banker have you considered a job in politics? You appear to have quite a talent for spin. :P
Ah, the good ole' AMD spin force out in full with this post. AMD releases new GPUs and their income drops even more than the previous quarter = good news apparently.
Best quarter in years??? LOL yeah because Q1 of 2014 wasn't a massively successful quarter for AMD after they cashed in on the mining fiasco or anything. But no, this quarter which had the biggest disaster of a new GPU series launch in the entire history of AMD/ATI is the best quarter in years.
You're correct on all counts. The growth over successive quarters is being ignored while talking year over year declines. The bottom was Q2. Q3 has started its come back. Then add the news of the joint venture and the 8-Core ARM57 Engineering samples in the Opteron space spotted today, and Q42015 and Q12016 are going to be when you really want to get in on AMD stock or be kicking yourself.
I'm surprised at you for believing this. AMD is on a death spiral. Selling 85% of their Chinese holdings is just going to speed this up, while giving the Chinese whatever worthwhile IP they may have there.
Below I list the quarterly revenue and earnings for the last few years. The PC business tends to do better in the second half of the year. The revenue numbers for 2013 are an example. That didn't happen in 2014, and while it appears to be happening this year, the effect appears to be small. There is nothing here to suggest that revenues will be up in the first half of 2016.
"Perhaps the most troubling aspect of today’s results is their gross margin is only 23%. They really need closer to 35% for profitability and are a long way from that today."
And the semi-custom segment is mostly long term contracts where margins don't change much from quarter to quarter, like for consoles I imagine the price is set from launch until end-of-life. And don't forget Q3 is usually the highest volume as manufacturers stock up for Christmas sales, to expect any improvement there for Q4 is folly. . So in reality it's not the entire company that needs to increase their margin by 12%, more like 40% of the company that needs to raise margins by 25%+. That won't happen without a major product launch not just being competitive with but clearly beating Intel or nVidia. And as Zen is still way out and they're both launching HBM2 cards next year, that seems optimistic to say it lightly.
Semi-custom margins are on a defined decline schedule and reduce over time, not stay the same. I can't remember off hand when this was discussed in the past, but rest assured that both Microsoft & Sony will pay AMD less for their chips next year than they did this year, and paid less this year than they did last year. That's one of the drivers for their margins coming down below 30% this year. That's also why it's so necessary (and beneficial to the console makers as well) for AMD to make sure they have a timely die shrink of those parts down to either 20nm or 16nm. More, smaller chips on the same wafer means AMD can offset those ASP declines. It was assumed, though not confirmed, that the 20nm technology charge they wrote off last quarter was related to to the console chips, as the 20nm node was not designed to be either high frequency (CPU) or high power (GPU).
Those rumors over the summer of a "slim" PS4 and/or XB1 coming for the holidays were based on estimates for 20nm ramp up schedules for the console chips, had the foundries not crapped the bed and given up. So now we all get to wait until 16nm is done and rolling to get the console redesigns. I'm really crossing my fingers for end of year 2016.
listening to the Q&A lisa has confirmed Zen is Q4 2016 (way too late) Lisa confirmed they are selling licencing their IP (aka gutting the company) the only part of AMD in the black is Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom They sold some part of the company . meaning another 1700 ppl will be laid off ! the rest including Graphics ALL NEGATIVE
That part of the company is being spun off. The employees will no longer be AMD employees, but they will be employees of the new joint venture company.
It's referring to the C&G segment mentioned in the previous sentence, but the article is a bit odd placing that paragraph right under a table with the non-GAAP figures for the whole company.
This was expected. Virtually the entirety of AMD's current lineup consists of obsolete and/or uncompetitive products. Carrizo might be decent if OEMs ever bothered to use it properly, and Fiji is OK but unbalanced (front-end too narrow) and overpriced. They really need to roll out their FinFET products (Arctic Islands and Zen) as soon as they possibly can. Until then, the slow bleeding will continue.
Except BlackBerry has absolutely no problems with it's balance sheet while AMD could potentially run out of cash if things don't go according to plan. So not that much like BlackBerry actually
For reference BlackBerry is acquiring companies to expand (Good Technology) with it's surplus while AMD has to sell pieces of itself to make sure it doesn't go into chapter 11 before it can release Zen.
Blackberry is going to go away, one way or the other. Their best hope is to become just another MDM, which will basically be Good with the Blackberry name.
AMD is already mostly there. Long term, they will either be bought out, or fail, or become some small custom chip house.
i think apple is trying to save AMD by putting AMD GPU's in their imac's and mac pro's.. But it's not working apple.. sorry ya old farts.. Apple is run by a bunch of 60 year old dudes.
amd gpus are cheaper except the fijis. apple has low level api so they can extract more performance out of it like dx12 benchmarks shows. and like it or not apple is quite a profitable company.
Even if AMD would have decent products it would only sell partially because of the brand recognition. On top of that there are a whole count of business that are only willing to buy certain chips of certain brand, better or worse they don't care.
last but not least, nice to blame oem about design, but how do you think those designs are "funded", oem r&d is not solely oem payed.... AMD has no chance to survive in this business and it should be mainly consumer and IT to blaim, lots of AMD parts that were good in the mid - low range were/are still good to buy, yet people choose an intel.... I can buy a 16core AMD cpu for less then a 8 core HT Intel, same for the 12 core vs 6 core or 8 core vs 4 core the amd is faster in many ways and only marginally more power consuming, yet IT everywhere chooses Intel ..... many things is anandtech and others to blame, artificial benchmarks, only showing high end cpu with big results, HT that is suppose to do magic while in reality it is marginal better (not to mention you have to pay an arm and leg for those high end way over priced cpu's....) My company has done many maths for several years and benchmarking, we are still running all our server based on AMD. Price/perf they are still more then ok for low mid range. Unless there are *** that think they need those 269x series for everyting is a ***** and those are so expensive that any price/perf is way out of the blue, your better of buying a flash array, IT farmis not lacking cpu power in 95% of the cases.
not fan, just plain dumb reality. we use about 25000 workstations and 1000 servers a year with petabytes of storage. we do know how OEM and there providers work....
I agree. The simple problem for AMD is just Intel having the latest node process. The difference before was a few months till the gap kept going larger. 14nm versus 28nm? No CPU architecture can compete with that kind of gap. Not only does a lower process improve performance and power, it also provided increased profit as Intel's chips are gradually becoming smaller despite the large integrated graphics.
Hats off to you! One of the most solid non-biased points in this thread. What people forget is that even if AMD had the world's best CPU architecture, no architecture can overcome being so many nodes behind. For years and years the AMD bashers have ignored this basic fundamental fact always blaming AMD for failing to compete with Intel. Fact is no one in the world can compete with Intel in the x86 space because no one can design a CPU with similar IPC to Intel + have access to the world's most cutting edge fabs at the same time. ARM? Solid product for smartphones and tablets but hopelessly outclassed when it comes to performance PCs.
Nothing wrong with 32 nm, it is on the way to 1nm, as it's sub 50 nm. Heck, even 45 nm is STILL in wide use today, so your stupidly offensive point is???
The point is that their current most competitive part is 2+ generations back from the rest of the competition. Who cares about people still running decade old chips? That has nothing to do with this.
AMD Radeon Nano comes to mind at right now it is THE ABSOLUTE BEST GFX CARD IN IT'S LONELY MINI-ITX CLASS, PERIOD! Unfortunately, it's also a niche product and is already sold-out and apparently AMD can't make enough for the demand, AWESOME PRODUCT, insufficient supply=:(
I'm less and less certain that Zen is going to be enough to save them. Even if they almost achieve parity in performance and efficiency with Intel, is there enough of a following for their brand to get people to buy it?
You are assuming most consumers buy simply based on brand, with complete disregard to performance and price? AMD doesn't have to outright beat $300-1000 i7s to make sense. The market for $50-250 CPUs is huge and that's where Intel has the weakest offerings. Think about it, imagine 8 full-fledged cores with IPC around Sandy Bridge going against an 4-core i5? A lot of people would choose the full 8-core CPU for $250.
Trouble is, AMD released what it called an 8-core CPU but was infact a 4-module CPU (2int/1fp per module); decent for threaded int, but it sucked for FP and its IPC was terrible, worse than the old Ph2. They've never caught up since then. They would have done better simply if they's shrunk the existing Ph2 design, added two more cores, tweaked it a bit and brought it out much earlier. Instead, AMD fans waited for ages and ended up with the poop pile that was BD. I remember seeing relevant mbds on eBay the very next day from disgruntled buyers. Again and again they promise but never deliver. I really hope they can turn it around with Zen, but past indications suggest otherwise. Likewise, I thought the Fury Nano would give NVIDIA a kick up the butt, but instead it turned out to be a grossly overpriced niche-market card with too little RAM, aimed at 4K users who if they had any sense would never buy anything that lacked HDMI 2.0.
My first PC build was an AMD, 6000+, excellent value at the time. First GPU was an AMD, an X1950 Pro AGP, again a great card back then. But over time, bit by bit, the advantages on price, performance, etc. have dwindled, and meanwhile drivers have become a joke.
Sure, some company like IBM or Samsung could buy out AMD, but why the heck would they?
And those who have convinced themselves that Zen will save the day are assuming Intel hasn't held anything back in reserve. Of course they have; Intel's been sitting on its butt for ages, ever since SB. They could release something way better than the consumer chips we have now; we know this is true because they already did, or do I have to remind people yet again? The 3930K *was* an 8-core CPU, just with 2 cores disabled. Intel didn't release an 8-core back then because they didn't have to. That was still the case when IB-E came around, and it's again why they didn't offer a mid-range 8-core with HW-E. They're holding back, because they can. If Zen does turn out to in any way have some decent performance, mark my words, Intel will ramp up their product line with a vengeance.
The only reason why AMD hasn't been allowed to die is because that would mean writing off an awful lot of debt, and the people who own that debt do not want to do that, for obvious reasons. AMD's long term debt has been much higher in the past (peaked at $5B in 2007), but atm it's $2B and it hasn't changed in
AMD better watch out because Apple's mobile SOC is increasing processing power year after year and is predicted to beat AMD in processing power and eventually become competitive enough against Intel's mobile processors.
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Tchamber - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
We've been reading about quarterly losses for years now. It'll be a sad day indeed when they close up shop. I'd hate to see them go out of business, maybe some one will buy them out.Wreckage - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
If someone wanted to buy them out, they would have already. Right now it's not a matter of if AMD will go out of businesses, it's just a matter of when. Their financial situation is not sustainable and is not improving.Jtaylor1986 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
They can limp along until Zen comes out. If Zen doesn't get traction it will likely be game over for the CPU division.ddriver - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Don't worry, intel wont let that happen, I mean the sole purpose behind amd's existence is to hide intel's monopolylDobson123 - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Not anymore.ddriver - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Intel is still a de facto monopoly in the CPU world. And there is nothing on the horizon to suggest this will change any time soon. ARM chips are still a niche product, and even though they do have ample performance to satisfy a good part of the desktop and mobile PC market, "somehow" that is not happening. I suppose this has to do with intel's long running practice of sneaky anti-competitive behavior. At the kind of margins ARM chips are selling, I guess their makers simply don't have the cash to buyoff OEMs.Genx87 - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Compare the unit numbers between x86 and ARM. Intel is not a monopoly in the CPU business. For instance 3.5 billion ARM chips were shipped in Q4 2014 compared to 81 million for all PC shipments. Tack on server and x86 mobile. They may hit 150 million units in Q4 between Intel and AMD.eanazag - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Intel is effectively a monopoly in some very key areas. Server and laptop mobile businesses. If you look at the prices of server chips, they are out of control. $3000 each for a 2P server in CPU alone. Intel has been competing against itself in the server CPU market for a couple of years now. That would happen in the laptop and desktop market too without AMD. I think the laptop market is only one AMD is close to competing in.AMD gives us no solid reason to think Zen will be any different than any other underperforming CPU launch they have had in recent years. We can expect to hear "it's a good product if it came out a year and half ago".
ddriver - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
AMD is not competition to Intel, you know, competition implies the actual ability to compete, and AMD cannot. AMD just creates the illusion for competition in the x86 market, thus it is needed and will not go down.Intel has ruined AMD for over a decade using illegal anticompetitive practices, and has reduced AMD to a crippled, impotent, pseudo competitor, put right there where Intel needs it to be. The last several generations of Intel CPUs have barely improved on performance, absent a competitor Intel is taking its sweet time, being careful to ensure it doesn't pull ahead too much to end AMD and lose its "competition".
AMD doesn't compete with Intel, it just has to do with the scraps Intel leaves for it, because the profit margins aren't worth Intel's effort. AMD is as much competition to Intel as maggots are competition to lions, just because they feed on the same carcass doesn't make them competition, the maggots are there to clear out what the lions won't be bothered with.
SeanJ76 - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
AMD has never been a competitor for Intel, AMD builds cheap garbage for welfare/broke ass gamers.......SeanJ76 - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
AMD doesn't know how to build processors, PERIOD!ddriver - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
3.5 billion ARM chips? That has got to include microcontrollers, which do not even go in the CPU category.Those numbers don't mean anything, seeing how 90% of the PC systems come with intel chips, if they have 90% of the market, I'd say they well qualify for a monopoly.
HighTech4US - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
It is NOT illegal to be a monopoly in the US.So Intel has no reason to save AMD.
Quote: No. Monopolies are perfectly legal, even under Sherman. What is illegal is using a monopoly or trust (A 'trust', in Sherman is what we would today typically call a cartel) to manipulate price and availability of a product or service.
The governments decision to break up AT&T, for example, was based not on the fact that it was a monopoly, but on the allegation that AT&T was using its monopoly position to artificially hike prices and keep prospective competitors out of the market.
ddriver - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link
I never said it is illegal ;) Why should it be, seeing how monopolies are running the world, it would make zero sense for them to outlaw themselves.xenol - Sunday, October 18, 2015 - link
If I could upvote you, I could.People don't realize that there are monopolies everywhere. Most of your utilities come from a single company. The government keeps a leash on them to make sure they aren't jacking up prices just because.
kaesden - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link
As much as intel needs AMD as a facade to hide their monopoly, AMD simply cannot sustain for much longer losing 100M+ per quarter. Eventually they will go bankrupt. Someone may buy them out, but there are issues with the x86 license from intel that will prevent an aquisition from being able to produce CPU's. This also would make nvidia a monopoly since no AMD means no more competition on any products. Prices will skyrocket and with the complexity of creating cpu and gpu components, there no chance of a new startup ever happening that would provide any competition, so once AMD is gone, the computer industry will be at the mercy of Intel, and the gaming industry at the mercy of nvidia with no chance for change happening again.ddriver - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
AMD is always losing money. The last 10 years they only have 2 in the green. AMD keeps losing money, and quite frankly to me it is a mystery how come it is still alive and where does this money come from. Either than have captured a family of leprechauns or someone is paying to keep it alive. Note the numbers:1999: -90 mil
2000: 983
2001: -60
2002: -1300
2003: -275
2004: 91
2005: 165
2006: -166
2007: -3380
2008: -3100
2009: 304
2010: 471
2011: 491
2012: -1180
2013: -83
2014: -403
2015: -922
Since 1999 AMD's business has resulted in a loss of about 8.5 billion $. It has also lost its fabs, and is now worth a fraction of what they overpaid for ATI.
It is quite clear that AMD has not and will not make money. The reasonable thing would be to terminate it, and yet it keeps on going and burning money, and my guess is the reason for this is no other than to hide Intel's monopoly.
Chaser - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
Enthusiasts have been waiting for the resurgence of a competitive AMD CPU and are placing their hopes in Zen. But enthusiasts are but a small segment. We may view Zen as a potential saving grace that doesn't mean it will magically transform AMD to a profitable corporation.nofumble62 - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
true. No one would buy a company with no talent left.eanazag - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
AMD has talent, but no to depleted leadership.Da W - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
AMD only worth $1,5B. It's intel's / microsfot / apple poket change for a quarter.Intel can't buy them because their X86 licence terms from the 80s prevent them to. There must always be 2 x86 companies, until one dies. Nobody else wants to buy them, cause everybody thinks PC is dead.
eanazag - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Intel could buy the graphics division.eanazag - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
I think someone would buy them out, but they haven't bottomed out to where it would make sense. I think potentials buyers are waiting for a bankruptcy filing.I'd be interested to see what the CPU and GPU dollars look like separately. Basically we know the CPU division is not profitable, but the GPU may or may not be. If I had to guess I would say the GPU business was profitable, but not in the same way Nvidia is. I would guess the CPU is really dragging down the GPU business numbers.
Simply put, AMD effed up when quitting the attempt for x86 competitiveness with no real thing to fall back on. I agree with JTaylor below. I think AMD's businesses will continue on in some fashion, but I'm not sure it will with the AMD name.
Shadow7037932 - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
Speaking of GPUs, I can see someone (Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, other) buying the GPU division for the IPs alone. Similar to what Google did with Motorola a few years ago.jjj - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
lol you really need to get more of a clue. This is the first time in many quarters when it's not bad, yet you think it's bad and worse news.On quarter they had solid growth in both segments. (and btw the Intel ASP numbers are distorted by the way they accounted for contra revenue - they had negative revenue on tablets while in Q3 a combination of lower tabs volumes and lower% of tabs receiving contra revenue distorted the revenue and ASP).
Margins for AMD were 23% but the inventory write-down impact was 6% so excluding that they were at 29%, up from 25% in Q2 and as expected.
It's their first quarter in years with mildly good news.
They have 3 more quarters to go and then in the second half of 2016 we'll see what new custom designs they got and what Zen can do. For now Q3 and Q4 are ok and that JV gets them a bit more cash for the short term.
Flunk - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
If Zen launches in 2016 it will be a miracle and probably also really late in the year.IBleedOrange - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
I don't see how anyone can see this as good news. Q2->Q3 uptick in topline revenue is good but it doesn't change the fact that it's down 46% YoY and they are continuing to lose more money (net revenue/operating income is more important than topline revenue), ASP's are going down, and their market share is shrinking. I mean, they are selling off parts of the business to raise cash and losing key talent.We all want to see a competitive, healthy AMD and watch Zen return them to profitably, but don't fool yourself that this is "Good News" in some way. At best, it's "Not Horribly Bad News"
Azethoth - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
I think the bottom line is we have had the PC -> mobile form factor transition. AMD did not make it and worse, is failing at their old business. Intel probably will not make the transition either. At any rate, Intel competition is no longer AMD, it is ARM licensees. Intel though can still choose to make ARM chips. AMD is just going to fail and the only part anyone gives a damn about, ATI, will be purchased by someone during bankruptcy.Duckeenie - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
A reduction in revenues by 26% compared to this quarter in the previous year doesn't seem like ANY kind of good news to me.Now that your services are no longer required as an investment banker have you considered a job in politics? You appear to have quite a talent for spin. :P
mdriftmeyer - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Keep ignoring the Q2->Q3 numbers. This new infusion will only make them healthier now that that backend is moved to their partner's bottom line.melgross - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
We can wait, and we can wait, and we can wait. No matter how long we Waite, the results will be the same—worse.Let's face it, every time we see these numbers, someone says to wait until the next devices come out. But when we do, it's just worse again.
MapRef41N93W - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Ah, the good ole' AMD spin force out in full with this post. AMD releases new GPUs and their income drops even more than the previous quarter = good news apparently.Best quarter in years??? LOL yeah because Q1 of 2014 wasn't a massively successful quarter for AMD after they cashed in on the mining fiasco or anything. But no, this quarter which had the biggest disaster of a new GPU series launch in the entire history of AMD/ATI is the best quarter in years.
mdriftmeyer - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
You're correct on all counts. The growth over successive quarters is being ignored while talking year over year declines. The bottom was Q2. Q3 has started its come back. Then add the news of the joint venture and the 8-Core ARM57 Engineering samples in the Opteron space spotted today, and Q42015 and Q12016 are going to be when you really want to get in on AMD stock or be kicking yourself.melgross - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
I'm surprised at you for believing this. AMD is on a death spiral. Selling 85% of their Chinese holdings is just going to speed this up, while giving the Chinese whatever worthwhile IP they may have there.mdriftmeyer - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
The money is in the designs and outsourcing the manufacturing the finished product. It's exactly what Apple does.Michael Bay - Sunday, October 18, 2015 - link
Except Apple can up and buy AMD and Intel five times over, and Zen is a year away.olderkid - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
They lose money on every quarter but they make it up on volume!melgross - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
They lose money in every quarter, and the overall volume is dropping as well.KAlmquist - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
Below I list the quarterly revenue and earnings for the last few years. The PC business tends to do better in the second half of the year. The revenue numbers for 2013 are an example. That didn't happen in 2014, and while it appears to be happening this year, the effect appears to be small. There is nothing here to suggest that revenues will be up in the first half of 2016.2013Q1 1088 -146
2013Q2 1161 -74
2013Q3 1461 48
2013Q4 1589 89
2014Q1 1397 -20
2014Q2 1441 -36
2014Q3 1429 17
2014Q4 1239 -364
2015Q1 1030 -180
2015Q2 942 -181
2015Q3 1061 -197
Kjella - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
"Perhaps the most troubling aspect of today’s results is their gross margin is only 23%. They really need closer to 35% for profitability and are a long way from that today."And the semi-custom segment is mostly long term contracts where margins don't change much from quarter to quarter, like for consoles I imagine the price is set from launch until end-of-life. And don't forget Q3 is usually the highest volume as manufacturers stock up for Christmas sales, to expect any improvement there for Q4 is folly.
.
So in reality it's not the entire company that needs to increase their margin by 12%, more like 40% of the company that needs to raise margins by 25%+. That won't happen without a major product launch not just being competitive with but clearly beating Intel or nVidia. And as Zen is still way out and they're both launching HBM2 cards next year, that seems optimistic to say it lightly.
takeship - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Semi-custom margins are on a defined decline schedule and reduce over time, not stay the same. I can't remember off hand when this was discussed in the past, but rest assured that both Microsoft & Sony will pay AMD less for their chips next year than they did this year, and paid less this year than they did last year. That's one of the drivers for their margins coming down below 30% this year. That's also why it's so necessary (and beneficial to the console makers as well) for AMD to make sure they have a timely die shrink of those parts down to either 20nm or 16nm. More, smaller chips on the same wafer means AMD can offset those ASP declines. It was assumed, though not confirmed, that the 20nm technology charge they wrote off last quarter was related to to the console chips, as the 20nm node was not designed to be either high frequency (CPU) or high power (GPU).takeship - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Those rumors over the summer of a "slim" PS4 and/or XB1 coming for the holidays were based on estimates for 20nm ramp up schedules for the console chips, had the foundries not crapped the bed and given up. So now we all get to wait until 16nm is done and rolling to get the console redesigns. I'm really crossing my fingers for end of year 2016.nunya112 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
listening to the Q&Alisa has confirmed Zen is Q4 2016 (way too late)
Lisa confirmed they are selling licencing their IP (aka gutting the company)
the only part of AMD in the black is Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom
They sold some part of the company . meaning another 1700 ppl will be laid off !
the rest including Graphics ALL NEGATIVE
Stuka87 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
That part of the company is being spun off. The employees will no longer be AMD employees, but they will be employees of the new joint venture company.Jtaylor1986 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
They aren't laying 1700 people off they are going to be employees of this joint venture.Dobson123 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Quote: " Revenue increased 12% over last quarter, although it is still down 46% year-over-year." It's more like 26%, isn't it?Kjella - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
It's referring to the C&G segment mentioned in the previous sentence, but the article is a bit odd placing that paragraph right under a table with the non-GAAP figures for the whole company.JDG1980 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
This was expected. Virtually the entirety of AMD's current lineup consists of obsolete and/or uncompetitive products. Carrizo might be decent if OEMs ever bothered to use it properly, and Fiji is OK but unbalanced (front-end too narrow) and overpriced. They really need to roll out their FinFET products (Arctic Islands and Zen) as soon as they possibly can. Until then, the slow bleeding will continue.melgross - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
This reminds me of Blackberry.Jtaylor1986 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Except BlackBerry has absolutely no problems with it's balance sheet while AMD could potentially run out of cash if things don't go according to plan. So not that much like BlackBerry actuallyJtaylor1986 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
For reference BlackBerry is acquiring companies to expand (Good Technology) with it's surplus while AMD has to sell pieces of itself to make sure it doesn't go into chapter 11 before it can release Zen.melgross - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Blackberry is going to go away, one way or the other. Their best hope is to become just another MDM, which will basically be Good with the Blackberry name.AMD is already mostly there. Long term, they will either be bought out, or fail, or become some small custom chip house.
Morawka - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
i think apple is trying to save AMD by putting AMD GPU's in their imac's and mac pro's.. But it's not working apple.. sorry ya old farts.. Apple is run by a bunch of 60 year old dudes.mdriftmeyer - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Right. They're the largest generating profit machine on the planet, because they are old dudes out of touch. Educate yourself before hand.The Macbook Pro with upcoming AMD GPGPUs will further cement AMD in all lines but the Mac Mini.
2016 will most likely be when Apple updates their FirePro line of Mac GPGPUs right after AMD makes them HBM2 ready.
sheeple - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
Old dudes out of touch, LOL more like gay-loving jerks!SeanJ76 - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
This is true, Apple is a gay persons product(and for stupid women)prtskg - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
amd gpus are cheaper except the fijis. apple has low level api so they can extract more performance out of it like dx12 benchmarks shows. and like it or not apple is quite a profitable company.SeanJ76 - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
Too bad every cpu/gpu in a Apple is Intel/Nvidia....so Apple doesn't really make anything of their own.osxandwindows - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
You idiot its because of 5kmelgross - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
You are insane.duploxxx - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
The problem is not only the consumer and IT rep.Even if AMD would have decent products it would only sell partially because of the brand recognition. On top of that there are a whole count of business that are only willing to buy certain chips of certain brand, better or worse they don't care.
last but not least, nice to blame oem about design, but how do you think those designs are "funded", oem r&d is not solely oem payed.... AMD has no chance to survive in this business and it should be mainly consumer and IT to blaim, lots of AMD parts that were good in the mid - low range were/are still good to buy, yet people choose an intel.... I can buy a 16core AMD cpu for less then a 8 core HT Intel, same for the 12 core vs 6 core or 8 core vs 4 core the amd is faster in many ways and only marginally more power consuming, yet IT everywhere chooses Intel ..... many things is anandtech and others to blame, artificial benchmarks, only showing high end cpu with big results, HT that is suppose to do magic while in reality it is marginal better (not to mention you have to pay an arm and leg for those high end way over priced cpu's....) My company has done many maths for several years and benchmarking, we are still running all our server based on AMD. Price/perf they are still more then ok for low mid range. Unless there are *** that think they need those 269x series for everyting is a ***** and those are so expensive that any price/perf is way out of the blue, your better of buying a flash array, IT farmis not lacking cpu power in 95% of the cases.
D. Lister - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Wow, a fan of AMD CPUs is quite a novelty these days.duploxxx - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
not fan, just plain dumb reality. we use about 25000 workstations and 1000 servers a year with petabytes of storage. we do know how OEM and there providers work....zodiacfml - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
I agree. The simple problem for AMD is just Intel having the latest node process. The difference before was a few months till the gap kept going larger. 14nm versus 28nm? No CPU architecture can compete with that kind of gap. Not only does a lower process improve performance and power, it also provided increased profit as Intel's chips are gradually becoming smaller despite the large integrated graphics.RussianSensation - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
@ zodiacfmlHats off to you! One of the most solid non-biased points in this thread. What people forget is that even if AMD had the world's best CPU architecture, no architecture can overcome being so many nodes behind. For years and years the AMD bashers have ignored this basic fundamental fact always blaming AMD for failing to compete with Intel. Fact is no one in the world can compete with Intel in the x86 space because no one can design a CPU with similar IPC to Intel + have access to the world's most cutting edge fabs at the same time. ARM? Solid product for smartphones and tablets but hopelessly outclassed when it comes to performance PCs.
extide - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
AMD server CPU's are still on 32nm!sheeple - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
Nothing wrong with 32 nm, it is on the way to 1nm, as it's sub 50 nm. Heck, even 45 nm is STILL in wide use today, so your stupidly offensive point is???extide - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
The point is that their current most competitive part is 2+ generations back from the rest of the competition. Who cares about people still running decade old chips? That has nothing to do with this.sheeple - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
EVEN 65 nm is STILLL in wide use as well, evidence the LEGENDARY Q6600...one of the MOST POPULAR CPU'S and uses 65 nm!!! LOL!!!medi01 - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
AMD's GPUs are quite competitive.CPUs only in low end.
sheeple - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
AMD Radeon Nano comes to mind at right now it is THE ABSOLUTE BEST GFX CARD IN IT'S LONELY MINI-ITX CLASS, PERIOD! Unfortunately, it's also a niche product and is already sold-out and apparently AMD can't make enough for the demand, AWESOME PRODUCT, insufficient supply=:(Nagorak - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
I'm less and less certain that Zen is going to be enough to save them. Even if they almost achieve parity in performance and efficiency with Intel, is there enough of a following for their brand to get people to buy it?RussianSensation - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
You are assuming most consumers buy simply based on brand, with complete disregard to performance and price? AMD doesn't have to outright beat $300-1000 i7s to make sense. The market for $50-250 CPUs is huge and that's where Intel has the weakest offerings. Think about it, imagine 8 full-fledged cores with IPC around Sandy Bridge going against an 4-core i5? A lot of people would choose the full 8-core CPU for $250.nofumble62 - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Yes, don't just talk, bring it in, people have been waiting for years, nothing shown up.mapesdhs - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link
Trouble is, AMD released what it called an 8-core CPU but was infact a 4-module CPU (2int/1fp per module); decent for threaded int, but it sucked for FP and its IPC was terrible, worse than the old Ph2. They've never caught up since then. They would have done better simply if they's shrunk the existing Ph2 design, added two more cores, tweaked it a bit and brought it out much earlier. Instead, AMD fans waited for ages and ended up with the poop pile that was BD. I remember seeing relevant mbds on eBay the very next day from disgruntled buyers. Again and again they promise but never deliver. I really hope they can turn it around with Zen, but past indications suggest otherwise. Likewise, I thought the Fury Nano would give NVIDIA a kick up the butt, but instead it turned out to be a grossly overpriced niche-market card with too little RAM, aimed at 4K users who if they had any sense would never buy anything that lacked HDMI 2.0.My first PC build was an AMD, 6000+, excellent value at the time. First GPU was an AMD, an X1950 Pro AGP, again a great card back then. But over time, bit by bit, the advantages on price, performance, etc. have dwindled, and meanwhile drivers have become a joke.
Sure, some company like IBM or Samsung could buy out AMD, but why the heck would they?
And those who have convinced themselves that Zen will save the day are assuming Intel hasn't held anything back in reserve. Of course they have; Intel's been sitting on its butt for ages, ever since SB. They could release something way better than the consumer chips we have now; we know this is true because they already did, or do I have to remind people yet again? The 3930K *was* an 8-core CPU, just with 2 cores disabled. Intel didn't release an 8-core back then because they didn't have to. That was still the case when IB-E came around, and it's again why they didn't offer a mid-range 8-core with HW-E. They're holding back, because they can. If Zen does turn out to in any way have some decent performance, mark my words, Intel will ramp up their product line with a vengeance.
The only reason why AMD hasn't been allowed to die is because that would mean writing off an awful lot of debt, and the people who own that debt do not want to do that, for obvious reasons.
AMD's long term debt has been much higher in the past (peaked at $5B in 2007), but atm it's $2B and it hasn't changed in
Jumangi - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Yikes the continuing decline of their gross margins is frightening.vision33r - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
AMD better watch out because Apple's mobile SOC is increasing processing power year after year and is predicted to beat AMD in processing power and eventually become competitive enough against Intel's mobile processors.SeanJ76 - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
AMD's days are coming to a close, with those numbers, they'll be lucky to stay in business through 2017....