AMD Reports Record First Quarter Revenue, Profit Of $257 Million.

Quote:

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SUNNYVALE, Calif. —4/15/2010

AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2010 of $1.57 billion, net income of $257 million, or $0.35 per share, and operating income of $182 million. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $63 million, or $0.09 per share, and non-GAAP operating income of $130 million.

“Strong product offerings and solid operating performance resulted in record first quarter revenue,” said Dirk Meyer, AMD President and CEO. “We continue to strengthen our product offerings. We launched our latest generation of server platforms, expanded our family of DirectX 11-compatible graphics offerings, and commenced shipments of our next-generation notebook platforms to customers.”

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http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases...2010apr15.aspx



:shrug:

saw this, kinda related and explains a little too.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AMDs-1....html?x=0&.v=1

looking good now that they dont have that fab

Selling off 5% A/H.

Basically, operating income declined in both GPU (-$3M) and CPU (-$15M), and the reason they are profitable vs last Q is all in the GloFo deconsolidation. (Not the $325 one-time, but no $100M of shared GloFo losses this time.)

Q2 guidance was typically weak.

The real problem seems to be this:

Analyst: "What can you do to improve microprocessor profit margins from the current 7% other than growing the top line revenue?"

Answer: It's a topline story.

Meaning... now that deconsolidation has happened, there doesn't look like any room for profit growth other than gaining share or overall market growth.

And the other story about Magny-Cours pricing bringing 2s pricing to the 4s market may sound good to customers, but investors/analysts are like, um, how will you make up for the loss in profits? Didn't have a great answer there.

Just confirmed no 32nm & no llano in available systems until H1'11.

Late to the call, didn't hear if anything on Bulldozer was asked/answered.

From the CC:

- AMD has samples of the Bobcat (28nm) fusion design.
- Llano is sampled to selected customers.


Regards, Hans

Hans beat me to it :).
Bobcat is less likely to be sampled to select partners so it must be Llano. Since they have Bobcat they indirectly hinted that BD cores are ready too(similar to Bobcat only done @ 32nm SOI not 28nm bulk).

The 28nm risk for ARMs was warm up/testing i knew it :D

Dirk confirmed(35:24 into Q&A session): volume ramp for 32nm is H2 2010 with systems OEM systems avalaibility in H1 2011 (both notebook and desktop). I really have no idea what CC did terrace listen to,it surely wasn't this one ...

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Originally Posted by informal

Dirk confirmed(35:24 into Q&A session): volume ramp for 32nm is H2 2010 with systems OEM systems avalaibility in H1 2011 (both notebook and desktop). I really have no idea what CC did terrace listen to,it surely wasn't this one ...

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AMDs "volume ramp" timing is never interesting. Dirk was asked 2 questions at different times.

1. No 32nm products in systems until H1'11

2. No Llano in systems until H1'11

The CC transcript will be up soon, you're welcome to check.

AMD always goes on and on about their internal ramps of processes to make people think the actual products will be available sooner than they actually will be. At least Dirk was clear in the CC:

32nm products? H1'11. Llano specifically? H1'11.

And let me get this right... by mentioning Bobcat, he was indirectly referencing Bulldozer?

That's, erm, quite some level of indirection, wouldn't you say? :rofl:

You can turn it around all you want,the man clearly said and I quote "OEM systems availability in H1 2011 ,both notebook and desktop". This has no hidden meaning man,deal with it already.
You are boring us to death with your no 32nm in 2011 talk.You have been beating that dead horse for a while now,let the "dream" die and move on already...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by informal

Since they have Bobcat they indirectly hinted that BD cores are ready too(similar to Bobcat only done @ 32nm SOI not 28nm bulk).

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Bobcat is NOTHING AT ALL like Bulldozer.

Good grief.

Don't you trust Chuck Moore?

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....rol-analystday

APU presentation, slide 8.

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If anything, mentioning LLano & Bobcat, yet not being able to mention BD suggests no working BD silicon yet, perhaps not even tape-out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by informal

You can turn it around all you want,the man clearly said and I quote "OEM systems availability in H1 2011 ,both notebook and desktop".

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Yes, that's LLano. I... never disputed this, in fact, I posted about it. LOL

Nobody asked about Bulldozer rofl.... You are clearly wishing that BD hasn't taped out yet,but all I can say is "running material" is there(even your "beloved" Chuck Moore stated so in Q&A session,back in November man-that's 5 months ago).AMD always stated 2011 as a target for BD launch,looking at how they executed starting with Deneb(pull-ins all the way with the roadmaps) you can bet they will execute equally if not better.


PS Bobcat is very similar to BD,except it was made by a separate team with different goals in mind(hence half the int pipes and no AVX and FMAC support in FPU,different cache organization etc.).

pfft, w/e all i care about is market parity, and intel playing fair. i wish there were more than just 2 companies (via does not count....you cant even go into a BB and get one for gods sake!).if amds new stuff is on par or better than Intel's, and intel plays it fast and loose.........i will declare war!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by informal

PS Bobcat is very similar to BD,except it

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is NOTHING AT ALL like BD. I mean, really. It's a synthesizable part...

It's AMD's "Atom". If it were anything like BD, then BD is in big trouble, let's put it that way. :rofl:

The synthesize-able part means it's done by a set of tools and the process is much faster then the custom way. It doesn't represent the underlying uarchitecture and the way chip works. Bobcat lacks the frontend BD will have and has some other limitations I previously said that AMD made public. Synthesize-able means much greater flexibility in design and production (much less custom work) and the downside as Mr Moore said a loss of ~20% clock frequency.
BD is targeted at high end and it's 1) developed by a separate team 2) not using the Bobcat design process approach since it's a high speed and throughput uarch.

PS You skipped commenting (again ) on Chuck Moore's confirmation they have running material in the end of Q&A .This happened 5 months ago btw.

edit: My mistake ,Rick Bergman stated this ,not Chuck Moore.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by terrace215

And the other story about Magny-Cours pricing bringing 2s pricing to the 4s market may sound good to customers, but investors/analysts are like, um, how will you make up for the loss in profits? Didn't have a great answer there.

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Obviously, I can't get into the specifics on this because it digs deeper into the financials than we release, but here is the long and short of it.

2P makes up ~75% of the market. 4P makes up ~4% of the market (IDC server tracker numbers).

That means that roughly ~6% of the business is 4P and if you just look at 2P and 4P for now (because the 6000 series can do both).

Here is a post that I did on the subject:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...5&postcount=36

Now, the goal with shifting the pricing on 4P was the following:

1. Actually grow the market (it needs to get bigger or go away, it was on a pretty good clip to do the latter...)
2. Drive more revenue
3. Drive more absolute profit dollars
4. Drive more market share

None of that should surprise people.

The net is, yes, ASPs will be lower, but overall, the ASPs for 2P and 4P combined went up because, surprise, when the prices are lower, the 4P people buy towards the top of the stack ($1386) not the bottom).

If you sell more processors proportionally (because the 4P eats away at 2P), you shift business to higher margins.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JF-AMD

Obviously, I can't get into the specifics on this because it digs deeper into the financials than we release, but here is the long and short of it.

2P makes up ~75% of the market. 4P makes up ~4% of the market (IDC server tracker numbers).

That means that roughly ~6% of the business is 4P and if you just look at 2P and 4P for now (because the 6000 series can do both).

Here is a post that I did on the subject:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...5&postcount=36

Now, the goal with shifting the pricing on 4P was the following:

1. Actually grow the market (it needs to get bigger or go away, it was on a pretty good clip to do the latter...)
2. Drive more revenue
3. Drive more absolute profit dollars
4. Drive more market share

None of that should surprise people.

The net is, yes, ASPs will be lower, but overall, the ASPs for 2P and 4P combined went up because, surprise, when the prices are lower, the 4P people buy towards the top of the stack ($1386) not the bottom).

If you sell more processors proportionally (because the 4P eats away at 2P), you shift business to higher margins.

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Yes, but how in the hell can AMD survive with lower ASPs considering that they've already got lower ASPs than Intel to begin with? how do they expect to attain profitability if they can't retain high ASP?

My view is that the crux of the issue is that AMD simply cannot provide enough value to both consumers and enterprise class customers in order to validate a higher ASP. This, to me, has been the story for AMD since Intel's core 2 rolled out. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

has that not always been the case?

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Originally Posted by Russian

Yes, but how in the hell can AMD survive with lower ASPs considering that they've already got lower ASPs than Intel to begin with? how do they expect to attain profitability if they can't retain high ASP?

My view is that the crux of the issue is that AMD simply cannot provide enough value to both consumers and enterprise class customers in order to validate a higher ASP. This, to me, has been the story for AMD since Intel's core 2 rolled out. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

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Way to misread and go off on a tangent... He said 4s asp will go down, but its still higher than 2s asp, and the 4s volume is expected to increase so overall (2s + 4s) asp will go up.

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Originally Posted by cky2k6

Way to misread and go off on a tangent... He said 4s asp will go down, but its still higher than 2s asp, and the 4s volume is expected to increase so overall (2s + 4s) asp will go up.

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He was spin-spin-spinning... and his bosses would be interested in his message-board commentary about 2p+4p asps.

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Originally Posted by informal

The synthesize-able part means it's done by a set of tools and the process is much faster then the custom way. It doesn't represent the underlying uarchitecture and the way chip works. Bobcat lacks the frontend BD will have and has some other limitations I previously said that AMD made public. Synthesize-able means much greater flexibility in design and production (much less custom work) and the downside as Mr Moore said a loss of ~20% clock frequency.
BD is targeted at high end and it's 1) developed by a separate team 2) not using the Bobcat design process approach since it's a high speed and throughput uarch.

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Good grief, why don't you ask Hans, or someone else you trust, to set you straight on this point. Bobcat IS NOTHING LIKE Bullldozer. Period. End of story. Bobcat is an order of magnitude less complex.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cky2k6

Way to misread and go off on a tangent... He said 4s asp will go down, but its still higher than 2s asp, and the 4s volume is expected to increase so overall (2s + 4s) asp will go up.

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Honestly, i feel like thats been the story for AMD for a long time. I admit, i did misread it... but nevertheless AMD has suffered in ASPs ever since conroe and seeing them have to lower 2S and 4S ASPs. Also, how will increased 4S volume affect ASPs? Most of the time increased volume of something like a 4S would drive down ASPs not up... unless demand outstrips supply. Which i think is doubtful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hans de Vries

From the CC:

- AMD has samples of the Bobcat (28nm) fusion design.
- Llano is sampled to selected customers.


Regards, Hans

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The only mention of "Bobcat" in

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1990...script?page=-1

is:



Derrick Meyer

We’ve talked in the past about our Bobcat core. That’s the brand new City 6 micro architecture which first appears in the Ontario product which we talked about in the analyst conference. The Ontario product is really focused on I’ll call it value PC’s and netbooks, but the Bobcat technology and other technologies that we have in house are appropriate to lower power envelopes such as are appropriate for Pads, and you’ll see Bobcat based products show up the following year appropriate to that market segment.



And there is no such mention of a 28nm design.

Methinks you may be misreading (spinning?) the following:



We do now have internal samples of both of our initial Fusion designs, are learning quite a lot, and are quite happy with what we see, and we started sampling to select customers, one of those two designs.



I think he refers to desktop + mobile LLano here, not Bobcat.

AMD reports $257 million profit

http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-repo...ofit/8881.html

god_43 pls put $257 million and profit in the title :D

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Originally Posted by informal

AMD always stated 2011 as a target for BD launch,

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:rofl::ROTF:

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Originally Posted by Anandtech

AMD will start including SSE5 support in the Bulldozer core, which with an expected launch date of 2009 is still two years off.

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Source

Andandtech is not AMD.

And Two year in semi-conducteur is very wide.

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Originally Posted by AMD.COM

The SSE5 specification, which is being made available to the developer community today at http://developer.amd.com/SSE5, will be implemented in products based on AMD’s next-generation “Bulldozer” core, available in 2009.

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Source

;)

I agree 2 years late in this business is incredible.

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In the graphics space, AMD has sold more than 6 million graphics units supporting Microsoft's DirectX 11 technology, and began selling its first notebooks with DirectX 11 graphics support.

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Read more at eWeek.com

How did the graphics division do separately? I cant seem to figure it out

what is projected for next Q? Without one time things are they doing better or worse?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=249249

Next quarter will be more interesting to see but AMD made great improvements. Congrats to them :up:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LightSpeed

How did the graphics division do separately? I cant seem to figure it out

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AMD-Re....html?x=0&.v=1

Look for "Segment and Category Information".
Graphics net revenue was $409M (vs. 421 in Q4) and operating income was $47M (vs. $50M).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by terrace215

We do now have internal samples of both of our initial Fusion designs, are learning quite a lot, and are quite happy with what we see, and we started sampling to select customers, one of those two designs.



I think he refers to desktop + mobile LLano here, not Bobcat.

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1) What does "design" mean to you? Would a different socket mean a new design?

2) If you look at following slide, would you assume a round-cornered box do be a design, or could such a box being spread over two market segments thought to be two designs?

http://data6.blog.de/media/347/45623...5242174_m.jpeg

If not, I see only two Fusion designs there.

Quote:

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Graphics segment revenue decreased 3% sequentially and increased 88% year-over-year. The sequential decrease was driven primarily by a seasonal decline in royalties received in connection with the sale of game console systems, largely offset by an increase in graphics processor unit (GPU) revenue. The year-over-year increase was driven primarily by an increase in GPU shipments.

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Nice increase YoY :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dresdenboy

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AMD-Re....html?x=0&.v=1

Look for "Segment and Category Information".
Graphics net revenue was $409M (vs. 421 in Q4) and operating income was $47M (vs. $50M).

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Why is the income so low? I thought the 5xxx would boost revenue considerably. IIRC ATI had generally higher incomes when they were a separate company?

terrace, how are you seeing amd making a net win after so long as a bad thing? :confused:
they are on tight asps, but so what? if it works, it works... and it obviously does work as they are making money...
with those low asps they managed to grow market share, and thats what they need as they dont have a competitive product right now...
gaining market share at a cost of low asps is a good move for an underdog competing with an 80% market share monster, wouldnt you say?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LightSpeed

IIRC ATI had generally higher incomes when they were a separate company?

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really? when?
i remember that they always operated at very small profits for some reason... some years they only had profits of 5million or something like that i think?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by terrace215

He was spin-spin-spinning... and his bosses would be interested in his message-board commentary about 2p+4p asps.

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Maybe if you attack and threaten enough you can get him to stop posting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LightSpeed

Why is the income so low? I thought the 5xxx would boost revenue considerably. IIRC ATI had generally higher incomes when they were a separate company?

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Quote:

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Hans Mosesman – Raymond James

Can you give us the mix of 40 nanometer shipments in the GPU space for the quarter?

Derrick Meyer

I don’t want to be precise but it was over 30%.

Hans Mosesman – Raymond James

What were they in Q4 just as a reference?

Derrick Meyer

Much less. As I said, we shipped about six million units in total of DX 11 40-nanometer CPU’s through the end of Q1.

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/1990...script?page=-1

And there still are TSMC, the 40nm problems and Nvidia allotting a lot of the available 40nm capacity to be used for their previous generation GPUs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by saaya

terrace, how are you seeing amd making a net win after so long as a bad thing? :confused:
they are on tight asps, but so what? if it works, it works... and it obviously does work as they are making money...
with those low asps they managed to grow market share, and thats what they need as they dont have a competitive product right now...
gaining market share at a cost of low asps is a good move for an underdog competing with an 80% market share monster, wouldnt you say?

---

MC also does another thing: propagate BD upgradable systems. That's what could be called customer binding.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by saaya

terrace, how are you seeing amd making a net win after so long as a bad thing? :confused:

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In a sense, it's yet another accounting gimmick, the "profit" this quarter vs last.
By changing the method by which they account for GloFo, their share of its ongoing quarterly losses went away (about $100M worth). This is separate from the 1-time $325M non-cash credit.

If you look at their "by segment" results, you can see the change.

Someone on the CC asked the CFO to characterize the Q1 results under the old accounting method, so he could better see what happened Q/Q. The CFO declined, something about not wanting to re-engineer the financials, which translates as: it wouldn't be very pretty if I did that.

The market seems to agree today.

Said in a more positive way: Had AMD NOT made an accounting change this Q, and posted $.09 (or $.06, unclear about those "intangibles"), I think the market would've been very pleased. That would've implied some significant strengthening in the core business.


----------------------------

Time for someone to ask AMD IR about one point on the call: When Dirk said they had internal samples of both their initial fusion designs, did he mean:

A: Llano desktop + LLano mobile
B: Llano + Ontario(bobcat)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by terrace215

In a sense, it's yet another accounting gimmick, the "profit" this quarter vs last.
By changing the method by which they account for GloFo, their share of its ongoing quarterly losses went away (about $100M worth). This is separate from the 1-time $325M non-cash credit.

If you look at their "by segment" results, you can see the change.

Someone on the CC asked the CFO to characterize the Q1 results under the old accounting method, so he could better see what happened Q/Q. The CFO declined, something about not wanting to re-engineer the financials, which translates as: it wouldn't be very pretty if I did that.

The market seems to agree today.

Said in a more positive way: Had AMD NOT made an accounting change this Q, and posted $.09 (or $.06, unclear about those "intangibles"), I think the market would've been very pleased. That would've implied some significant strengthening in the core business.

---

to put it in perspective, the ENTIRE market is down about 1-2%, and AMD being small is use to larger fluctuations.

the simple question, is AMD actually in the realm of making profits again? but thats not so simple to answer for a chip company, as they spend massive amounts on R&D, and use 2-4 years to pay it all back very slowly. even if they didnt actually make it to the black yet, this year should show a steady increase to that, and hopefully next year it continues. 1 quarter might be nice, but id rather see a clear average that shows good long term potential.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Russian

Honestly, i feel like thats been the story for AMD for a long time. I admit, i did misread it... but nevertheless AMD has suffered in ASPs ever since conroe and seeing them have to lower 2S and 4S ASPs. Also, how will increased 4S volume affect ASPs? Most of the time increased volume of something like a 4S would drive down ASPs not up... unless demand outstrips supply. Which i think is doubtful.

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Provided you grow the market, the net aggregate ASP for the whole server business can go up.

If you believe that 4P is going to continue to shrink at the rate that is has, not changing the dynamics would mean in a few years nobody is buying 4P products anyway.

Look at the record companies. They all freaked out about apple selling individual tracks instead of complete albums from the store.

A few billion dollars later, the market has determined how it wants to purchase music. And the first guy, with the most aggressive plan, gets first mover rights and gets to establish the market.

We are like itunes. A $3692 Xeon 7500 is a packaged CD. Where are you going to place your bet?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JF-AMD

We are like itunes. A $3692 Xeon 7500 is a packaged CD. Where are you going to place your bet?

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Basically, disruption?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JF-AMD

Provided you grow the market, the net aggregate ASP for the whole server business can go up.

If you believe that 4P is going to continue to shrink at the rate that is has, not changing the dynamics would mean in a few years nobody is buying 4P products anyway.

Look at the record companies. They all freaked out about apple selling individual tracks instead of complete albums from the store.

A few billion dollars later, the market has determined how it wants to purchase music. And the first guy, with the most aggressive plan, gets first mover rights and gets to establish the market.

We are like itunes. A $3692 Xeon 7500 is a packaged CD. Where are you going to place your bet?

---

......but itunes sucks.........;p.

This must be the fastest 1Q report I have ever heard of from a big corporation.

Nope, it is on the regular schedule.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by saaya

terrace, how are you seeing amd making a net win after so long as a bad thing? :confused:
they are on tight asps, but so what? if it works, it works... and it obviously does work as they are making money...
with those low asps they managed to grow market share, and thats what they need as they dont have a competitive product right now...
gaining market share at a cost of low asps is a good move for an underdog competing with an 80% market share monster, wouldnt you say?

really? when?
i remember that they always operated at very small profits for some reason... some years they only had profits of 5million or something like that i think?

---

the chipset part of former ati is merged into "computing products" in amd's accounting

Hm, looks like the actual CPUs sold pretty well!
I think the next quarter will be more interesting, though, with Thuban and MC affecting the sales.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by terrace215

In a sense, it's yet another accounting gimmick, the "profit" this quarter vs last.
By changing the method by which they account for GloFo, their share of its ongoing quarterly losses went away (about $100M worth). This is separate from the 1-time $325M non-cash credit.

If you look at their "by segment" results, you can see the change.

Someone on the CC asked the CFO to characterize the Q1 results under the old accounting method, so he could better see what happened Q/Q. The CFO declined, something about not wanting to re-engineer the financials, which translates as: it wouldn't be very pretty if I did that.

The market seems to agree today.

Said in a more positive way: Had AMD NOT made an accounting change this Q, and posted $.09 (or $.06, unclear about those "intangibles"), I think the market would've been very pleased. That would've implied some significant strengthening in the core business.


----------------------------

Time for someone to ask AMD IR about one point on the call: When Dirk said they had internal samples of both their initial fusion designs, did he mean:

A: Llano desktop + LLano mobile
B: Llano + Ontario(bobcat)

---

hmmmm yeah i get what you mean...
but doesnt every big company do this?
they always spin their numbers, and while i agree with you and hate it, thats how the market works in the end, doesnt it? you get away better if you spin results and make them sound good, even if people know its not the real deal, than telling them the truth and its not what they want to hear...

and see it this way, that way smart analysts and investors actually get a chance to use their skills and outdo all the ret4rded wannabe analysts that have no clue of the industry and mostly just believe whatever the cfo and ceo tells them :)

thats why i dont like investment banking and trading... you get punished for telling the truth and rewarded for making stuff up every single time...

so overall what, amd still actually lost money?
but they did improve their financial situation, right?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LightSpeed

Why is the income so low? I thought the 5xxx would boost revenue considerably. IIRC ATI had generally higher incomes when they were a separate company?

---

Classic "ATI" revenue would have also included chipset and consumer (DTV / mobile phone) revenues.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LightSpeed

Why is the income so low? I thought the 5xxx would boost revenue considerably. IIRC ATI had generally higher incomes when they were a separate company?

---

Margins are lower in the graphics space, particularly the discrete as both ATI/nVidia generate reference designs and typical reference cards are simply sold to the partners who rebrand them. Cost of chips, memory, PCB, marketing yada yada make the actual profit margins a bit smaller compared to CPUs.

GPUs, the chips themselves, usually have lower gross margins to, likely attributable to the larger general die size.

Even before AMD acquired ATI, ATI bounced between black and red, their profit margins were never huge.