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

To: Scumbria who wrote (54957)	4/9/1999 1:01:00 PM
From: Lymond	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580598

Scumbria, Hardly. AMD's P&L speaks for itself, don't you think? John

To: Scumbria who wrote (54957)	4/9/1999 1:24:00 PM
From: Burt Masnick	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1580598

Re:"Decent products, egregiously poor execution. Isn't this a contradiction in terms?" No! AMD's production shortfalls against their own goals and business plans as announced publicly (to their recent legal peril) are prime evidence of a near continual history of malmanagement. Either they knew they couldn't produce that volume (dishonest) or they thought they could and were surprised (at the very least foolish) or they hoped they could if everything turned out perfect (fairly amusing given their past but remarkably dangerous). My vote is foolish. In most industries and endeavors, doing what you commit to do is looked on as good or at least acceptable execution and falling well short is regarded as poor execution. Notice that the relative quality of the products in this context is immaterial. Let's put it in the most basic terms. The "best" microprocessor in the world is useless if it is unproducable in quantities you need for economic viability. That's just the story on the production side. On the pricing side AMD is shocked, shocked that Intel lowered prices more than they anticipated. AMD gave insufficient weight to Intel's ability to produce chips at a continually lowering cost. This is, of course, in your view, Intel's fault, even though record profits from record revenues are occurring at Intel. In my view, AMD has also proved to be poor at strategizing. I used to call AMD the company with a business plan from hell, but coupled with a management team and board of directors that can be fairly called reality challenged, they may find their only options are bankruptcy or fire sale to someone with deep pockets within the current year. Oh yeah, the addition of the former pres of DEC is just what they need on that board. By the way, Fortune may or may not know a lot about microprocessor manufacturing but they can read balance sheets - a skill apparently in short supply at your favorite company. And balance sheets is how they keep score in this league. Unless (until?) AMD starts calling itself a dotcom, that red ink kind of stinks up the joint. AMD may or may not have some good architectural designs on the boards or in pilot production, but they have life-threatening fiscal problems. Ask yourself this. What happens if they malperform again this quarter and lose another $150 million? They are running too close to the edge both financially and process-margin-wise to be regarded as a sure shot to survive, let alone prosper. Good investing, Burt