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Technology Stocks : AMD:News, Press Releases and Information Only! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yougang Xiao who wrote (3780)	1/14/1998 2:55:00 AM
From: Robert Walter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6843

Yougang, Excellent summary of the conference call, I am going to add any additional commnents from my notes. Here are the major points: 1. More than 10k 0.25u K6 shipped(As stated earlier all these processors came from SMDC and that fabs capacity will be in the "tens of thousands per quarter range not hundreds of thousands" - Jerry Sanders 2. Began 0.25u ramp at fab 25 3. First significant shipment of 0.25 K6 will be in March 4. Announce internal organization alignment today to enhance probability of 0.25 ramp success at fab25 5. 0.35 overall yield continues to be disappointing 6. Priority of supporting strategic customers (IBM, CPQ) both in their need for performance and volume is higher than (A) total unit shipment, (B) ASP, and (C) Short term profitability. 7 Due to little experience in Fab 25 with 0.25 process, therefore (A)difficult to predict unit volume increase over Q4, (B) difficult to predict qtrly volume with proper mix to return to profitability. 8. Smartest people work very hard to achieve success in 98. 9. K63D in Q2. 10. 5 of top 10 and 10 of top 20 boxmakers use K6 (#1 Compaq,#2 IBM, Fujitsu,Acer,AST in the top 10) 11. will add equipment at Fab 25 for expanding capacity, not to solve the yield problem. ( $168 million will be used to convert Fab 25 to the 0.25 micron of which most will come in Q1 & Q2.) 12. Q1 will be toughest due to ramp of k63d coincide with 0.25 ramp, emphasis will be on k63d. 13 expect crossover of wafer start (by the end of the Q1) at Fab 25 by end of Q1 14 No K6 is sold under $75 15 Non Dresden related capital expenditure will be around 750 million in 98, cash will be used up in first half of 98 (Most of the capital expense will occur in the first 2 quarters.) 16 identified sources of yield defects, work to remove all defect sources. (Yield problem not related to local interconnect that was the problem back in 2nd Q 1997 but that problem has been solved.) 17 IBM packaged, not fabricated K6 18. K7 to demo in Nov at MF, competitive with Intel's offering then. 19 More than 50% K6-233 produced in Q4, but customers need was less than 50% k6-233; Q1's 233 output will definitely higher than 50%. 20. K63D will be the emphasis of 0.25 production 21 No more K6 notebook customer near term due to tight supply. 22. 98 success depends on 0.25 ramp. New 23. Asian economic problems had little impact on AMD's number; they were down about 1% because of the problem mostly related to a problem with Korean debt deferments. However the cost of doing business at AMD's plant in Malaysia was lower helping offset the problem. 24. All other divisions were profitable except CPU's 25. Revenues, Computational Products $203 mil. up 15% from Q3, Communications $174 mil. down 3% from Q3, Non-Volatile Memory $184 mil up 2% from 3Q, Vantis $55 mil. down 11% from Q3. 26. For the year Commmunications group sales were up 6%. 27. Vantis will be announcing for the first time products in the FPGA markets this with expected revenues to first impact in 1999 as vendors and manufacturer develope applications for them. 28. Flash memory had record sales in terms of unit and bits, with a 15% increase in units growth and 30% bit growth over Q3. 29. FASL 2 shipped first wafers in Q4 1997. 30. Flash ASP's were down 35% from Q4 1997. 31. Flash migration from 0.35 micron to 0.25 micron wafers will occur in 1999. 32. Book to Bill for all the Non-CPU divisions was 1. 33. AMD shipped abouit 1.5 millon K6's in Q4 and 2.9 million for the year. 34. CS44E (0.25)process is a more robust process which does not use any wet process steps which should leave less defects. I will emphasize that Jerry stated that this conversion to the 0.25 micron process for the K6 was a very high risk strategy, but they thought it was worth the risk. Again, thanks Yougang Xiao for a great post!!! I hope you don't mind me adding to it and reposting it.