AMD Q1 2015 Earnings - 23 cents a share loss, to exit dense server (SeaMicro)

[Elixer]

Lol seriously except lisa there is hard to find any.

Richard Huddy is always crying in his interview about gamewroks.
AMD Roy is the biggest troll in twitter.

If u say these people are intelligent than god help AMD from them self.

You don't know what you are talking about.
Keller, Papermaster, Koduri, and others are all top notch talent.
The Mantle inspired Vulcan or even DX12 if you look under the hood are all prime examples of AMD's talent pool/achievements.

Roy is expendable IMO, he just seems to go at things the wrong way.
As for Huddy, meh, I have seen worse, but, he is far from worst.

They are in this hole since they went with CPU design that didn't have the proper software support it needed to show what it can achieve, and they paid dearly for that costly mistake.
They also had some bad CEOs that had no clue what they were doing.

 

[Elixer]

And you really think AMD is going to have a killer CPU this year? Hahahahhaha ok. It's one thing to be wishful, but another to believe in Unicorns.

I said GPU this year, CPU next year.
Unicorn is the codename of their nextgen APU! 😉

 

[Idontcare]

I felt the same way about Read. He did the job they brought him in to do, then they fired him when they realized they'd put AMD on a terrible course.

The BoD are amazingly unscathed in terms of public scrutiny after years and years of mismanagement and dereliction of duties.

 

[Elixer]

The BoD are amazingly unscathed in terms of public scrutiny after years and years of mismanagement and dereliction of duties.

Yeah... that is another area where they need a shakeup at.

 

[desprado]

Yeah... that is another area where they need a shakeup at.

I dont think there is any time for AMD to shake up or do experiment.It is very rare that companies make a come back from a horrible consumer support and lying to investor type of background legacy.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

The MS injecting cash into Apple thing is a myth.



Intel may buy up some pieces of AMD after the bankruptcy, but that's about it.

$150,000,000 in non-voting stock surely was a myth too. Do you even read what you type?

Trolling and insulting other members is not allowed.
Markfw900

 

[TurtleCrusher]

This is grim. I'm not sure why anyone would be happy with this. Losing AMD would mean less CPU options and a pretty dire GPU market.



Would their x86 licence transfer over if they are bought out by a competitor (samsung or nvidia for example...)

Fanboys and stockholders, which many clearly are one or both. X86 is losing ground and if they were consumers or enthusiasts of the platform they'd want all three major players to succeed.

But no. They have their investments and/or undying infatuation for the products they purchased and circlejerk to any news that furthers their agenda.

 

[AtenRa]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/307...arnings-call-transcript?page=4&p=qanda&l=last

Lisa Su - President and CEO

On the positive side, we did see progress in several of our strategic initiatives. Mobile APU ASPs and revenue increased from the year-ago period, highlighted by increases in commercial client APU shipments and revenue from the fourth quarter, setting a record for commercial client processor sales. Our focused commercial client strategy is gaining momentum and our investments are driving awareness and generating pull with commercial and government buyers. We delivered record FirePro server unit shipments in the quarter, driven by enterprise wins and AMD professional GPUs now being offered in the world's highest volume server, HP's DL380. We also successfully passed several key milestones in the quarter as we prepared for the introduction of our new 2015 APU and GPU products, including first revenue shipments of our next-generation Carrizo family of notebook APUs in advance of system launches planned for the second quarter. Carrizo is a standout product that delivers better graphics performance than competitive offerings, as well as all-day battery life, driven by the largest generational performance per watt improvement we have ever delivered with our mainstream APUs.

1: The huge decline of revenue came from the Desktop sales mostly and entry/low-end laptops, exactly where Intel's decline was.

2: Mobile APU Revenue and ASP where up, they investing heavily in perf/watt with Kaveri onwards and Carriso will be one of the most advanced APUs in the market in 2015.

3: Professional Graphics sales and revenue is rising in a market dominated by NVIDIA.

Lisa Su - President and CEO
Now turning to our enterprise embedded and semicustom segment. Revenue declined 14% sequentially, largely driven by lower game console royalties and a seasonal decrease in semicustom SoC console sales.

Embedded processor sales were roughly flat from the year-ago period with weaker than expected thin client demand, offset by continued adoption of our embedded APUs across targeted market segments.
Samsung introduced a new AMD powered digital signage solution and both Fujitsu and GE intelligent platforms released new industrial computing boards powered by AMD embedded SoC's in the quarter.


At the corporate level, we continue aligning larger portions of our R&D investments to take advantage of long-term growth opportunities across our EESC segment. As we prioritize our R&D investments and simplify our business, we made the decision in the first quarter to exit the dense server systems business as we increase investments in our server processor development. We retained the fabric technology as a part of our overall IP portfolio.

1: Decline in Console SoC sales drove lower revenue of the EESC group.
2: They only exit the system business of dense servers, they will not sell dense Servers anymore but they kept the fabric IP and they will continue to make Processors/SoCs for that market.

Lisa Su - President and CEO

We see very strong opportunities for next-generation high-performance x86 and ARM processors for the enterprise datacenter and infrastructure markets, and will continue to invest strongly in these areas.

If anyone had a doubt about what ZEN will be now they can be assured it would be a high-performance x86 CPU.

Lisa Su - President and CEO
On the broader question of the computing and graphics business, we have significant product technology and IP that serve this market very well. I think it's important for us to focus on the areas where we can differentiate and innovate. Frankly, the portions of the business that are more commodity like are less attractive to us, and so we have very really focusing on managing the business for improved profitability and improved differentiation. So going forward we'll continue to do that.

I believe this is one of the reasons CG group revenue is declining every quarter for the past 12 months or more. They also dont have a competitive $150 and above Desktop CPUs from 2013 onwards. So obviously Desktop Sales and Revenue is shrinking because APUs cannot substitute the lost High-End Desktop/Laptop sales.
This may change with ZEN for both high-end Desktop SKUs and APUs.

 

[DrMrLordX]

These Q1 results may be disappointing news to AMD stockholders, but they shouldn't be surprising.

I didn't expect their dense server operation to go *poof*. That was supposed to be where Seattle did its work. Maybe AMD just expects other dense server OEMs/ODMs to feature Seattle in their products.

Dont mean to sound unsympathetic, I am really sorry you are getting laid off, but many people retail or the restaurant business for instance get nothing. 26 weeks sounds pretty good to me.

I used to work for the US Postal Service as a glorified temp (TE, or Transitional Employee). I was a DCO (Digital Conversion Operator or Data Conversion Operator, I forget which). We all got laid off in '09 thanks to a facility closure. I got 0 unemployment despite working for the USPS for almost seven years, because my part-time job I had on the side disqualified me from getting unemployment. I was entitled to no severance or job placement services. Best I could do was beg for a transfer to another similar facility that was also on the chopping block.

 

[NTMBK]

On the bright side- of all the things AMD could have killed off, Seamicro is the one I think we all care least about. Better that they shut Seamicro down than slash R&D spending and delay their CPUs and GPUs again.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Ever since sanders left I've felt the company is nothing more than a play toy for the BODs
They make decisions and put pressure on the management to implement whatever faad or idea that's popular that month regardless of the consequences. If the CEO/employess don't comply they get canned.
The BODs shouldn't be the management and aren't engineers or marketing experts.

Am I far off on this one ?

I feel the same. Every single person in management since have only cared about the next bonus or something to add on a CV. While the company is now turned into another VIA. And the swingdoor at the top isnt making anything better. Every new person there wants to make his or hers own changes. And it kills the employees.

The SeaMicro complete loss is just another example of the extreme bad leadership.

I wonder how Jerry feels when seeing his former company in such a downfall to a nobody presence.

 

[ShintaiDK]

It seems in Q2 AMD will be a semicustom company with a PC division attached. Rather than the other way around. Semicustom will account for the majority of revenue. Consoles today is half the company.

Even with CPU/APU+GPU AMD dont even hold 5% revenue of the PC CPU segment. And nVidia got around 25% higher revenue than AMD.

 

[AtenRa]

It seems in Q2 AMD will be a semicustom company with a PC division attached. Rather than the other way around. Semicustom will account for the majority of revenue. Consoles today is half the company.

Even with CPU/APU+GPU AMD dont even hold 5% revenue of the PC CPU segment. And nVidia got around 25% higher revenue than AMD.

Like Intel is turning in to a Server company ??

That was a goal AMD made in 2011-12, to have 50% of the business from Semi-custom/Embedded in 2015.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Whats the goal for 2016? 75% semicustom? 🙂

Growth market includes professional graphics and ultra low power clients

Its quite clear AMD is a goner in the PC segment with the current development. Even semicustom/embedded is hrinking for them. PC just shrinks even faster. There is no growth just decline.

 

[NTMBK]

Whats the goal for 2016? 75% semicustom? 🙂

For the semicustom business to be a success, they still need to create a competitive library of IP. They need the building blocks for customers to make a design from! And if they have that IP developed, it makes sense to keep on producing consumer parts from that same IP and keep a second revenue stream going.

 

[mrmt]

On the bright side- of all the things AMD could have killed off, Seamicro is the one I think we all care least about. Better that they shut Seamicro down than slash R&D spending and delay their CPUs and GPUs again.

This is the first shoe dropping. Seamicro was the main venue growth AMD was supposed to have with Zen/K12. If the Microserver is dead to the point Seamicro is as good as a write off, then a significant part of AMD server strategy is negatively impaired. I think we will have more bad news on the FAD.

 

[mrmt]

For the semicustom business to be a success, they still need to create a competitive library of IP. They need the building blocks for customers to make a design from! And if they have that IP developed, it makes sense to keep on producing consumer parts from that same IP and keep a second revenue stream going.

For 300MM per quarter? I doubt it. They need to cut a further 40MM in R&D and SG&A just to break even.

 

[ShintaiDK]

For the semicustom business to be a success, they still need to create a competitive library of IP. They need the building blocks for customers to make a design from! And if they have that IP developed, it makes sense to keep on producing consumer parts from that same IP and keep a second revenue stream going.

The question is how much semicustom oppotunities there is.

The consoles are already running out of steam. And AMD post lower revenues and lower royalties.

The only way they reached 50/50 was because the PC segment collapsed for AMD. While the semicustom slowly shrinks.

 

[NTMBK]

This is the first shoe dropping. Seamicro was the main venue growth AMD was supposed to have with Zen/K12. If the Microserver is dead to the point Seamicro is as good as a write off, then a significant part of AMD server strategy is negatively impaired. I think we will have more bad news on the FAD.

We'll see how it goes, I guess. I do worry about K12; if they want to displace the existing x86 server ecosystem, they will need a significant perf/W advantage. Even matching Intel won't be enough to convince customers to make the jump from x86 to ARM, and go through the hassle of switching their entire software stack. I'm just not convinced that they can outdo Intel like that. Still, it should be a useful CPU core for the next generation of console designs.

But hey, at least we got confirmation again that Zen and K12 are "high performance" designs, so hopefully Zen will provide something interesting for us.

 

[ShintaiDK]

But hey, at least we got confirmation again that Zen and K12 are "high performance" designs, so hopefully Zen will provide something interesting for us.

But its still undefined. How do you think AMD rates the current consoles performance wise? Alot of slow AMD CPUs are defined as high performance by AMD

 

[AtenRa]

Its quite clear AMD is a goner in the PC segment with the current development. Even semicustom/embedded is hrinking for them. PC just shrinks even faster. There is no growth just decline.

Jumping to conclusions ??? 2016 onwards may be completely different than 2014-2015.

Lets see first how Carrizo will do in 2015 and Fiji, then in 2016 AMD will have a new x86 and GPU architecture with an added bonus of 14nm FF node.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Oh yes, next year will be much better. Always next year and next products. And when next year comes its the year after that year!

 

[AtenRa]

Oh yes, next year will be much better. Always next year and next products. And when next year comes its the year after that year!

As I have said, lets wait and see how CURRENT Product portfolio (Carrizo, Seattle, Fiji) will do in 2015 and then we can see about 2016.

It was you who jumped to conclusions about 2016, not me 😉

 

[NTMBK]

The question is how much semicustom oppotunities there is.

The consoles are already running out of steam. And AMD post lower revenues and lower royalties.

Console sales have a heck of a lot of seasonal variation. Kids get given Playstations for Christmas, it's not exactly rocket science. Same thing happened last generation, and the one before that, and the one before that.

And this generation is selling considerably better than the last one, which means there'll be another generation after it. Now AMD needs to focus on developing the tech they need win the next generation.

 

[mrmt]

But hey, at least we got confirmation again that Zen and K12 are "high performance" designs, so hopefully Zen will provide something interesting for us.

Where?