{"id":10415,"date":"2012-04-20T07:37:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T05:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=10415"},"modified":"2012-04-20T13:30:31","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T11:30:31","slug":"amd-results-indicated-healthy-pc-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/hardware\/10415\/amd-results-indicated-healthy-pc-market\/","title":{"rendered":"AMD results indicated healthy PC market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices<\/a> forecast revenue above expectations in another sign that PC demand is holding up better than anticipated.<\/p>\n

Shaky economies in Europe and the unsteady recovery in the United States, a growing consumer preference for tablets, and a recent shortage of hard drives due to flooding in Thailand last year have taken a toll on the PC industry.<\/p>\n

“There was a decent Q1 number and decent Q2 guidance, and that’s indicative of a rebound in PC builds as hard drives become more available,” said MKM Partners analyst Daniel Berenbaum.<\/p>\n

Better-than-expected results from Microsoft<\/a> on Thursday supported that view, sending the software maker’s shares up 2.5 percent after hours.<\/p>\n

Other chipmakers offered mixed results, with some pointing to a recovery in sales after customers, worried about the economy, trimmed inventories last year.<\/p>\n

AMD faces stiff competition as Intel<\/a> starts shipping its newest powerful PC chip, code-named Ivy Bridge, and builds sales of its recently launched Romley server platform.<\/p>\n

Sunnyvale, California-based AMD has been launching new processors of its own, and recently appointed CEO Rory Read<\/a> has vowed to improve on long-standing execution troubles.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Intel posted earnings confirming the PC industry is alive, but not kicking, in a report that failed to fuel new stock gains after a recent run-up.<\/p>\n

Global PC shipments in the first quarter grew 1.9 percent, year-over-year, research firm Gartner<\/a> said last week. That was better than the firm’s previous forecast of a 1.2 percent dip in PC shipments, which were hurt last year after flooding in Thailand damaged hard drive factories.<\/p>\n

“The hard (drive) situation has pretty much gotten past everybody in the industry … with the only issue being some residual higher pricing that’s floating around in the market,” AMD CEO Read told analysts on a conference call.<\/p>\n

Mixed chip signals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fairchild Semiconductor and Cypress Semiconductor Corpeach forecast quarterly revenue above analysts’ expectations as customers clear out chip inventories and place new orders.<\/p>\n

Freescale Semiconductor Holdings I Ltd, whose chips are used in cars, cellphones and consumer products like Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle electronic reader, posted first-quarter revenue of $950 million, shy of the $961 million expected. It said Chief Executive Rich Beyer planned to retire once a successor is found and takes over.<\/p>\n

Flash memory chipmaker SanDisk, hurt by falling prices for its products, posted first-quarter revenue that was also short of already lowered estimates. And programmable chipmaker Altera also posted weak results that fell short of analysts’ estimates.<\/p>\n

Surging stock<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following major layoffs last year and a new, more flexible wafer agreement with contract manufacturer GlobalFoundries<\/a>, AMD’s stock has surged 44 percent so far this year, much more than Intel’s 14 percent rise and the S&P 500’s increase of about 10 percent.<\/p>\n

In March, AMD dumped its equity stake in GlobalFoundries, three years after spinning off the company that makes most of its computer chips, in a move that frees it to strike manufacturing deals with other foundries.<\/p>\n

As part of the deal, AMD agreed to make a payment of $425 million to GlobalFoundries, incurring a related charge of $703 million that pushed AMD into a loss for the first quarter.<\/p>\n

Also in March, AMD finalized its $334 million acquisition of SeaMicro Inc, a deal – applauded by investors – meant to establish a foothold in smaller, low-power computer servers, a potential area of growth as Internet services expand and corporations look to save on electricity bills.<\/p>\n

AMD posted first-quarter revenue of $1.59 billion, down from $1.61 billion in the year-ago period. It estimated second-quarter revenue would rise 3 percent from the previous quarter, plus or minus 3 percentage points.<\/p>\n

Analysts had expected AMD to post $1.56 billion in revenue for the first quarter and $1.59 billion for the current quarter, a sequential rise of 2 percent, according to Thomson Reuters I\/B\/E\/S.<\/p>\n

AMD had a net loss of $590 million, or 80 cents a share, compared to a net profit of $510 million, or 68 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings were 12 cents per share, beating expectations of 9 cents.<\/p>\n

Shares of AMD rose 1.63 percent in extended trade after closing flat at $7.97.<\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

Intel launches cloud server chip<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

AMD CEO prepares company for a fight<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices forecast revenue above expectations in another sign that PC demand is holding up better than anticipated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[25,1295,467,305,169,229,1109],"class_list":["post-10415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-active","tag-amd","tag-chips","tag-intel","tag-microsoft","tag-results","tag-sandisk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10415"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10434,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10415\/revisions\/10434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}