SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc., a leading U.S. maker of microprocessors, on Wednesday said it was canceling appearances by senior company officials at two investment conferences -- one of them scheduled for later in the day -- declining to offer a reason.
Advanced Micro spokesman Scott Allen said the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company had pulled out of its scheduled appearance on Wednesday at the Nationsbanc Montgomery Securities Technology conference in San Francisco, and scratched a second one set for next week at a Goldman, Sachs & Co. conference in New York.
"Right now, we're not giving a reason," Allen told Reuters.
By Wednesday afternoon, Advanced Micro's stock was down $2.25 to $22.06 on the New York Stock Exchange.
In the past few months, AMD has faced stiffening competition from Intel Corp. , the world's largest chipmaker.
Until recently, Intel had all but ceded the market for chips used in low-cost PCs to Advanced Micro and National Semiconductor Corp. But lately Intel has responded by introducing higher-performance, lower-cost Celeron chips in a bid to regain market share.
In mid-January, AMD reported lower-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter as production glitches prevented it from making and selling faster microprocessors that carry higher profit margins. Although the chipmaker had made substantial progress since posting a huge loss last year, it stumbled because it couldn't churn out enough of the faster K6 II chips that customers wanted. The K6 II with 3DNow multimedia-enhancing technology competes against some of Intel's chips.
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