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发帖数: 1034 | 1 October 16, 2014 3:03 PM
Dean Takahashi
Advanced Micro Devices chief executive Lisa Su said in an analyst conference
call today that the company missed its third-quarter earnings targets
because of weak consumer PC sales.
“While our enterprise, embedded, and semi-custom chips had a good quarter,
we did face challenges in computing and graphics due to ongoing weakness in
the consumer PC market,” Su said. “We know what we need to do to improve
results, and we are taking the appropriate actions.”
Among the actions was a 7 percent reduction in AMD’s headcount.
AMD’s earnings are closely watched as a bellwether for low-cost computers,
as the company is the No. 2 maker of PC microprocessors, and it is also one
of the “big two” graphics chip makers for PCs. The company has been trying
to adapt to the shift toward mobile by creating alternative chips in custom
markets where Intel, its giant rival, doesn’t play.
“Our performance in the component and graphics channel was weak,” Su said.
“We saw sellout momentum slow, particularly in China.” That led to
distributors beomcing more cautious in stocking inventories of processor and
graphics chips.
AMD reported net income of 3 cents a share on revenue of $1.43 billion, down
2 percent from a year ago. Analysts were expecting earnings of 4 cents per
share before special items and $1.47 billion in revenue. In the third
quarter a year ago, AMD reported earnings of 4 cents a share and revenue of
$1.46 billion. Analysts had previously estimated that fourth-quarter
earnings per share would be 5 cents and revenue would be $1.48 billion.
The stock fell more than 8 percent in after-hours trading, but it bounced
back to $2.51 a share, down 5 percent from the close.
Embedded processor revenue grew, and the company won a variety of new
customers like Arista, which bought chips for switches for cloud networking.
Enterprise and semi-custom chip (such as game console processor) sales were
up from a year ago. The third quarter was a record month for the shipment
of game console chips, as Microsoft and Sony loaded up on in advance of
shipping systems for the holiday season.
Su said AMD had achieved two new semi-custom chip customers. These could
generate $1 billion in revenues over three years, with the first revenues
arriving in 2016, she said.
“It’s important to note we are diversifying our semi-custom business
beyond gaming,” Su said.
Su said the company is optimistic as well about creating ARM-based server
chips for the enterprise, another area where it hopes to offer high-
performance, low-power chips to contend with Intel’s faster-but-power-
hungry server chips. AMD is expecting ARM-based server system launches next
year.
Earlier this month, AMD appointed Su as its new chief executive in a
surprise change, replacing Rory Read, who had been on the job for three
years.
On Oct. 8, Rory Read, 52, stepped down as CEO. Su, 44, was the No. 2
executive, or chief operating officer, under Read. She is the newest female
top executive at a major tech company, and she is the first female CEO at 45
-year-old AMD.
But she faces a tough challenge. Intel’s executives believe that they
gained market share in the third quarter against AMD, who is the perennial
runner-up to Intel in the PC microprocessor business. But the chipmaker has
branched out to dominate some sectors, such as processors for video game
consoles like the new PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Since 2012, AMD has cut its
operating costs by 30 percent and kept its cash at about $1 billion. It has
also cut back on staff and focused its chip-design efforts. In an interview
with VentureBeat, Su said her company won’t walk in Intel’s shadow.
Read joined AMD three years ago after leaving the No. 2 job at one of AMD’s
biggest customers, Lenovo. He hired Su in 2012 and appointed her the head
of various business units. More recently, she was appointed chief operating
officer responsible for AMD’s business units, sales, global operations, and
infrastructure enablement teams.
AMD has about $2.2 billion in debt. The company said it plans to reduce
headcount by 7 percent by the end of the year as part of a restructuring
that will result in a charge of $57 million. The company will also realign
its real-estate holdings as well.
For the fourth quarter, Su expects revenue to decrease 13 percent from the $
1.43 billion in the third quarter. AMD chief financial officer Devinder
Kumar said it expects a weak consumer PC environment and lower semi-custom
chip revenue. The latter means that the company’s sales of chips for game
consoles — the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One — are going down in the wake
of the launch in 2013.
AMD is now a bellwether for the game console market as well, as its chips
are in Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft game machines. The question there is
how much the market will slow down in the wake of the 2013 console launch
and increasing competition from mobile and tablet games as well as other
devices, such as Amazon’s Fire TV set-top box.
“I firmly we are on of the few companies with the market position and
capabilities to deliver world-class technologies and great products that
will lead the industry forward,” Su said.
She said the company is going through a multiyear transformation, but she
believes the strategy is a sound one. |
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