greg s. Re: AMD's earning. Here's AOL's take on AMD's earnings announcement. Particularly liked the last line.
"Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 18 closed: Company came out with its latest earnings results after the close yesterday, and suffice it to say, it was more of the same. That is, there were more losses, more pricing pressure, and more competition from Intel. To its credit, AMD managed to beat revised estimates calling for a loss of $1.26 per share by $0.16 as it lost "only" $162 mln, or $1.10 per share. On June 23, the company warned that it would lose approximately $200 mln and that sales would be less than $600 mln. In fact, Q2 sales rose 13% on a yr-over-yr basis to $595 mln, but were down 5.7% sequentially as AMD sold 3.7 mln of its K-6 family processors versus 4.3 mln in the first quarter. The fact that average selling prices slipped to $67 from $78 in the first quarter, and are expected to drop to the mid-$50 range in Q3 is not doing much to build confidence in its sales prospects for the third quarter. Although the company said it expects to maintain K-6 market share in the third quarter, it raised the white flag so to speak by acknowledging that due to competition from Intel, further gains in unit market share or revenue growth for its K-6 processor family were unlikely. Now, it's pinning its hopes on the high-end K-7, or Athlon chip, but that isn't expected to ship in large volumes until at least the fourth quarter. Even then, it will continue to face competition from Intel at that end of the market, and given AMD's history of production problems, it's hard to have much confidence in the company's prospects at this juncture especially since its President, Atiq Raza, the man credited for overseeing the introduction of the K-6 chip and for supervising the design of the K-7, announced his resignation, citing personal reasons. Thus, a lot of loose ends at the moment for AMD and analysts don't seem to be in a hurry to help them tie them up as there are currently 22 "hold" recommendations on the stock. As such, AMD will do well to keep pace with the market, but if it's Athlon chip doesn't deliver... well, you can probably fill in the rest.- PJO
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