<< Their execution on infrastructure side has been awfull and represents a key weakness IMHO. >>
They've always got a key failure of some type, but right now infrastructure actually looks pretty good as far as I can see. Prices of DDR memory and delays of palomino to Q3 seem much more problematic.
Look at this quote from this article:
dailynews.yahoo.com
AMD, which claims that the Athlon chips outperform Intel's Pentium 4 chip by as much as 40 percent, also announced that it will release a new line of mobile chips called Palomino in the third quarter of 2001.
I don't know if they're confusing the mobile with the desktop, but if this is accurate it looks like the mobile parts will end up almost a full year late. If it's that late it tells me something is severely wrong with the chip. (maybe the power consumption on palomino hasn't been improved nearly as much as everyone has hoped.
Either way, I'm curious if they'll ever enter the laptop/server markets while they still have a chance to really dominate.
Realistically, AMD has done a horrible job capitalizing on their opportunities this year.
A lot of people still talk about AMD like it's performing like it did 2 years ago, when it transformed itself completely. At that time, they managed to win the respect of the industry, win support from all the motherboard manufacturers, get new contracts with all the major pc companies (other than dell), and set record profits quarter after quarter. Not to mention stay ahead of intel technologically.
In the past year, we've only seen a 33% increase in operating frequency, we haven't gotten a new laptop product out, a large cache processor out, a SMP processor out, and there have only been minor enhancements to the core. Also, the company is most likely going to show YOY decline in revenues and earnings.
I find it increasingly difficult to remain excited about this stock. I think it's a good value, but they're starting to perform like AMD of yesteryear. |
