Analysts ecstatic over AMD's $226m loss in Q3

You have to appreciate Wall Street's unending desire to see AMD - the ultimate underdog - succeed. The chip maker today posted a $226m loss in the third quarter, replacing a $121m profit in the same period a year ago. In addition, executives rebuffed any requests to commit to profitability down the road. But still the analysts …

[Jay Ell III]

You are not wrong on your points; even though you missed the analysts ones.

As far as the not so hyper coments comming from the mouthes of the AMD officers, you have to understand that AMD, besides being a humble company cannot, in any way or form, try to pump themselves. They have responsibilities with their investors and aggressive coments from them could stimulate the share price beyond reality and some people could suffer financialy from it in case of an "under deliver".

The processors revenue being $1.2b; slightly less than same period last year represents nothing more than lower prices compared to same period last year and, even at lower prices, the volume increased by 16%. So, should the output been less, you should have seen even less processors revenues.

$226 million loss is a huge loss indeed. However, it is half --- HALF = 1/2 --- of those $454 million reported just one quarter ago.

Off course they are more than confident that they will achieve profitability next quarter at revenues of $2b or near $2b. That would be only 20% over this quarter. While graphics might be lower as they said, processors will more than likely make up for the difference and more. Did you miss the "hundreds of thousands quad-core to be shipped on Q4"?.

C'mon, give AMD a break. They deserve a break after all.

Yes, congratulations to AMD and it's team. It was a fantastic quarter; everything considered.

Jayelliii

[Anonymous Coward]

Jayelliii is a pumper

Jayelli's comments on Ashley Vance's article about AMD's dismal Q3 earnings are just an attempt to put yet more lipstick on this pig.

Since when should anyone, let alone an investor, be happy to have four consecutive quarters of losses.

What is needed is swift and decisive action from the AMD Board or the majority owners of AMD to get new blood into the company.

AMD deserves to be tarred, feathered, and paraded.

[Shad]

hear hear!

I completely agree with you Jayelliii

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD earnings

I agree with anonymous coward.

AMD has been nothing but a drag on investors.

The only people getting rich off AMD are the good old AMD executive team.

The shareholders are left to scrape the bottom of the barrel, much like AMD's been forced to with their firesales of late.

What's up with the brown nosing on the CC?

Graphics won't carry AMD forward in Q4. The wad's been shoot. Pffft.

Intel's coming with 45nm and it looks like a winner.

[sue]

$226m.....

Chips and bits and piles of..... well anyway... I'm a bit suspicious of that $226 million figure, try tapping it into your fave search engine and see how many results you get, and different ones too. Cynicism says it's a number just pulled out of the air.

As for all this well done pap, how the hell does losing that many millions equate to a well done? In a quarter too...3 months....sigh.

[Arthur]

Stick to Writing About IT

Please, please, please stick to writing about IT, reg. Yes AMD lost money this quarter, but these guys are evaluating the value of AMD's business, not one quarter worth of results. Losing money this quarter in exchange for their huge growth is worth it ultimately. A week of business classes would have taught you this. Wall Street has very little interest in seeing a business succeed or fail, they have an interest in succeeding themselves, and lying to "be nice" is not conducive to that goal.

AMD is growing, AMD is making good acquisitions, AMD has a huge release around the corner, and they recently forced Intel to go on a price slashing rampage. These are all good signs. Despite not being at their peak in terms of market share, and despite the fact that their processors are seemingly not "1337" enough for many reg readers, AMD is improving their position.

As a side note: my $300 Core2Quad says Intel agrees with Wall Street. I guess they don't know the chip game, either.

[spiny norman]

Stock market analysts

Remember when Dell used to hold earnings calls? All the analysts falling over themselves to have Kevin Rollins' babies? Bring back Steve Milunovich, I say.

[Dunstan Vavasour]

@sue

A lot of quarterly figures can be pretty meaningless. Once a quarter is going to show quite a loss, it's normal to add costs in straight away and squirrel away revenue for next quarter.

After a quarter this bad, expect the next one to show up positive as the sandbagged sales come through.

[Anonymous Coward]

re "Since when should anyone, ... be happy to have four consecutive quarters of losses."

It's called investment.

If a firm is making something new then there will be a period in which the firm makes a loss. The risk that the firm will never make a profit is borne by the shareholders, who stand to lose their investment (and no more than that if it has limited liability) in the firm and they stand to gain a share of the profits if the firm does well.

Owning shares doesn't imply a god given stream of income.

For all I know AMD are a bunch of wasters; on the other hand they may be trying to muscle into a market with high barriers to entry in the teeth of vicious competition.

My tip: Laughing Boy, 4:30, Kemptown.

[chuckufarley]

If only.

If only one could find the new Barcelona's on sale. Most places have them listed as "Back Ordered", which is a nice way of saying there are not enough to go around the channel.

[kevin]

Forced Intel to slash prices???

Arthur what are you on, because you need to start sharing with the whole class... AMD has never forced Intel to slash prices, Intel did that to bury AMD further in the hole they've been digging. Intel posted $1.86 BILLION in profits, up over 40% despite dropping prices. AMD is not hurting Intel's (or Intel's investors) bottom line one bit. No one at Intel is crying because they didn't break the $2B mark for the QUARTER.

AMD is about to get pounded into the ground with 45nm Quads coming out at speeds that will put delayed 65nm AMD chips to shame. Intel is ramping up to 32nm fabs with working samples already made, while AMD can't even make full batches of quads on 65nm, hence the tricore debacle that will only hurt AMD in the long run.

AMD has to start making full batches of 65's at higher speeds just to stay afloat the next year. Tricores need to not happen for them. If they get caught in the Tri market ony two possible outcomes exist:

1) They can't make good 65nm quads even at the current low clock speeds, which means they have problems that will need to be fixed before 32nm can even be considered, putting them even farther behind Intel

OR

2) They fix 65nm and get great quad yeilds, but have customers they promised Tris to, which mean sabotaging a good quad to make a tri and thus selling a great expensive quad chip at a crappy cheap tricore price.

[anthony bingham]

AMD and all that Prattle ...

Guys ... come on ... so far I have read what could be described as a combination of "intuition and what the words sound like " AMD are a very professional bunch of Danglers who do good stuff in a vigorous [ not reckless ] high tech enviroment and deserve to be encouraged until the chips are down and the data unequivocal ... so waffle on my hearties on have a quaff of cheer !!

[Arthur]

Re: Kevin

Umm... first link on google for "intel price cut" guess who it attributes the cut to? Shocking. But dont worry, businessweek probably doesn't know anything about business.

Intel's recent deep, deep cuts, some of more than 50%, are targetted at AMD, they were not driven by fair value for these products dropping so drastically. And, frankly, no matter how much money they made, it doesn't change that they went through a huge round of price cuts this summer. I'm not really sure what you hope to gain by quoting completely irrelevant figures.