Thursday, April 17th 2014
AMD Reports 2014 First Quarter Results
AMD today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2014 of $1.40 billion, operating income of $49 million and net loss of $20 million, or $0.03 per share. The company reported non-GAAP operating income of $66 million and non-GAAP net income of $12 million, or $0.02 per share.
"AMD continued our momentum by building on the solid foundation we set in the second half of 2013, further transforming the company," said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. "Backed by our powerful x86 processor cores and hands-down best graphics experiences, we achieved 28 percent revenue growth from the year-ago quarter. We are well positioned to continue to grow profitably as we diversify our business and enable our customers to drive change and win."
Quarterly Financial Summary
Additionally, AMD repurchased approximately $64 million aggregate principal amount of its 6.00% Convertible Senior Notes due 2015 in the open market utilizing cash balances in Q1 2014.
Microprocessor average selling price (ASP) was flat sequentially and decreased slightly year-over-year.
GPU ASP increased sequentially and year-over-year driven by the Radeon R7 and R9 family of products.
Recent Highlights
Rebellion Developments, Square Enix and Xaviant are the latest developers to join the AMD Gaming Evolved program and will optimize their future PC games to make them look and run better on AMD hardware.
For the second quarter of 2014, AMD expects revenue to increase 3 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, sequentially.
"AMD continued our momentum by building on the solid foundation we set in the second half of 2013, further transforming the company," said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. "Backed by our powerful x86 processor cores and hands-down best graphics experiences, we achieved 28 percent revenue growth from the year-ago quarter. We are well positioned to continue to grow profitably as we diversify our business and enable our customers to drive change and win."
- Gross margin was 35 percent in Q1 2014.
- Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, including long-term marketable securities, were $982 million at the end of the quarter, close to the optimal balance of $1 billion and well above the target minimum of $600 million.
- Total debt, long-term and short-term, at the end of the quarter was $2.14 billion, up from $2.06 billion in Q4 2013.
Additionally, AMD repurchased approximately $64 million aggregate principal amount of its 6.00% Convertible Senior Notes due 2015 in the open market utilizing cash balances in Q1 2014.
- Computing Solutions segment revenue decreased 8 percent sequentially and 12 percent year-over-year. The sequential and year-over-year declines were due to decreased client unit shipments.
Microprocessor average selling price (ASP) was flat sequentially and decreased slightly year-over-year.
- Graphics and Visual Solutions segment revenue decreased 15 percent sequentially and increased 118 percent year-over-year driven largely by semi-custom SoCs. GPU revenue increased sequentially and year-over-year due to strong demand for the AMD Radeon R7 and R9 family of products.
GPU ASP increased sequentially and year-over-year driven by the Radeon R7 and R9 family of products.
Recent Highlights
- Industry veterans Nora Denzel and Mike Inglis were appointed to AMD's board of directors, each bringing a diverse set of management, technology, sales and marketing expertise.
- AMD announced an amendment to the Wafer Supply Agreement with GLOBALFOUNDRIES that established fixed pricing and other terms which apply to products AMD will purchase in 2014. AMD expects to purchase approximately $1.2 billion of wafers from GLOBALFOUNDRIES in 2014, in line with the company's current market expectations.
- AMD expanded its latest industry-leading family of graphics chips with the introduction of the AMD Radeon R7 250X, R7 265 and R9 280 for mainstream users and the AMD Radeon R9 295X2, the world's fastest and most powerful graphics card powered by two AMD Radeon R9 Series GPUs on a single card.
- AMD launched the AMD FirePro W9100 professional graphics card for next-generation workstations, delivering an industry-first 16GB DDR5 memory, more than 2 TFLOPS of double precision compute performance and 4K support on up to six displays.
- AMD's momentum as the hardware development platform of choice for the gaming community continued in the quarter.
Rebellion Developments, Square Enix and Xaviant are the latest developers to join the AMD Gaming Evolved program and will optimize their future PC games to make them look and run better on AMD hardware.
- AMD announced support for Microsoft DirectX 12, a new version of the graphics API, on all AMD Radeon GPUs that feature the GCN architecture.
- AMD announced further details of the AMD Opteron A1100 Series, the first 64-bit ARM-based server CPU at 28 nanometer. The company also displayed a comprehensive development platform which includes an evaluation board and a comprehensive software suite to enable a robust 64-bit software ecosystem for ARM-based server designs in advance of general availability planned for later this year. AMD also announced it would contribute a new micro-server design using the AMD Opteron A-Series to the Open Compute Project.
- AMD announced global availability of its new AM1 platform, bringing an unprecedented level of graphics and compute capabilities to the mainstream market at very attractive price-points. The socketed quad-core and dual-core variants of the AMD Athlon and AMD Sempron APUs are based on award-winning GCN architecture and "Jaguar" CPU core.
- AMD made a strong showing at Mobile World Congress with the debut of the company's 2014 Mobile APU line-up. AMD also earned a "Best of Mobile World Congress 2014" award for the "Nano PC" design concept, a full-feature Windows 8 PC reference design the size of a smart phone.
- AMD and Adobe announced numerous performance optimizations for video-based applications in Adobe Creative Cloud on AMD's discrete GPUs and APUs. The work by both companies builds on the already impressive optimizations for Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe SpeedGrade CC, and Adobe Media Encoder CC, made in recent months.
- AMD continued to expand its immersive graphics, bringing 3D and 4K graphics to embedded gaming machines, digital signage, medical imaging, commercial aerospace, conventional military and other embedded applications with the introduction of the AMD Embedded Radeon E8860 GPU.
For the second quarter of 2014, AMD expects revenue to increase 3 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, sequentially.
16 Comments on AMD Reports 2014 First Quarter Results
But it is tough there, Qualcomm is dominant, while Intel is starting to focus on mobile. Look at NVIDIA, they aren't doing so well with their Tegra anymore (could be because it isn't a really good SoC), so if AMD is going mobile, it is going to be tough
As for AMD, well they are not dead yet. And they better continue concentrating in the gpu market. Nvidia is a tough competitor but a much more easy target than going against Intel.
As for AMD, and speaking of Bobcat/Kabini, I think they are doing fine against Intel. Clearly that is where they should be aiming (until desktop apus are realistic for 1080p gaming and/or leveraging the gpu compute for typical cpu tasks becomes more common), and they are. I imagine they will continue to do so. At some point we all have to come to terms, as they did, with the fact we don't need them to win the high-end x86 processing segment. We simply need them to leverage the best mix of cpu+gpu within a given form-factor/resolution, just like nvidia is planning. I hope that includes very low watt specific apus (for phones and tablet) rather than scaling existing designs, especially considering how many people left or lost their jobs over it (and the fact they have alluded to ARM apus in the future), but we'll see.
Tablets? Maybe, but Intel is coming to town and the market is going to be divided between X86 and ARM. So, can you fight both Qualcomm and Intel? And after Intel, AMD will follow. Mediatek will also be there with their 8 core solutions. Too crowded in every section. Hi end, mid range, low end. If not today, pretty soon.
You also forget the Apple market. They don't need you. They create their own SoCs.
What is left? Shield, Tegra Tab, or in other words what you can produce on your own. Is this enough? Maybe to keep you in the market, but I doubt to cover the expenses except if you create something really revolutionary.
Nvidia will have to move in bigger devices where they have the advantage. Netbooks, laptops, desktops. A completely Nvidia platform with ARM SoC in the middle and a powerful GPU connected using maybe NVlink running Steam OS and Android at the same time(like what Intel was showing recently or what AMD is trying to accomplish with the help of Bluestacks).
As for AMD, as long as Intel is leaving them breathing room, it is going to be OK. And maybe if they manage to gain enough market share in the professional graphics to become more competitive again in all sectors.
Headcount was reduced from last quarter but Amd still has 500+ employees yoy.
The Globalfoundries and Samsung 14nm FinFET tie up could keep AMD competitive with Intel's 14nm.
Anyways, I expect the Samsung deal is mostly a way for Samsung to have a go-to secondary manufacturer in case they need more capacity and the bonus is they get some money, too. Obviously, for GloFo it helps them not keep throwing money away on their own attempts and helps them bridge the gap between them and Intel whose head start on fabs was at one time seemingly insurmountable. It may yet be, depending on if how many delays they suffer.
I expect most fab companies (or companies who have fabs) see Intel as their real competitor and all other companies as potential allies against Intel. That's a testament to how far ahead of the rest of the industry Intel is.