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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Xpiderman who wrote (46089)	1/14/1999 9:19:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583406

Xy - Re: " These repeat losers did it again Thursday, with AMD falling 5 1/4, to $22 1/2, and Kodak dropping 8 3/16, to $70 1/2. " As the famous - but now SILENT - Drbrbes likes to say: STAY TOOOOOONED Paul

To: Xpiderman who wrote (46089)	1/14/1999 9:25:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1583406

AMD turned in its second quarterly profit in a row, but a new set of manufacturing problems kept the chipmaker from meeting Wall Street's expectations. On the strength of its popular K6 and K6-2 processors, AMD, Intel Corp.'s largest competitor, posted a profit of $22.3 million on sales of $788.8 million. That compared to a loss of $12.3 million on sales of $613.2 million for the year-earlier fourth quarter. But AMD's 15 cents per share earnings fell short of consensus estimates of 18 cents per share that analysts were expecting, largely because the company ran into problems when it manufactured K6-2 processors running at 400 MHz. Although the problem has been fixed, ''it had at least a $20 million impact on our bottom line this quarter,'' chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders said. Production problems have been a longtime thorn in AMD's side. The Sunnyvale-based company has had difficulty manufacturing enough of its well-regarded K6 and K6-2 chips to make a consistent profit. Even the fact that this was the first time since 1997 that AMD was able to post two consecutive profitable quarters wasn't enough to mollify some analysts. ''Investors' patience is going to be tried again,'' said Tad LaFountain, a Needham & Co. analyst who has a ''hold'' rating on AMD shares. ''It was a keen disappointment.'' AMD shares fell $3.75 to $27.75. For the year, AMD lost $103.9 million on record 1998 revenue of $2.5 billion. In 1997, the company posted a $21 million loss on sales of $2.3 billion. Even though AMD's earnings fell short of analysts expectations, the company did point to some significant successes during the quarter. AMD shipped more than 5.5 million processors during the quarter, and its market share for sales of retail PCs increased to 36 percent in December, despite heavy pressure from Intel, the world's largest chipmaker. ''I think what that shows is that right now the K6-2 line with 3DNow is a better brand than Intel's Celeron,'' Sanders said. But remaining profitable in 1999 promises to be a bigger challenge for AMD, as Santa Clara-based Intel is promising to be even more aggressive this year in establishing its Celeron chips in the low-end of the PC marketplace. ''This next quarter is going to be a difficult one for AMD,'' said financial analyst Ashok Kumar of Piper Jaffray. ''Intel intends to go after the low end of the market, and that's going to eat into AMD's market.'' Intel moved up the introduction of 400 MHZ Celeron. By Tom Quinlan Mercury News Staff Writer