Advanced Micro Devices

By CIO New Zealand staff | Monday, January 11 2010

Advanced Micro Devices hit a roadblock on its path to profitability during the second fiscal quarter of this year - an ageing inventory of old chips and falling PC prices holds the company hostage, analysts said in July.

Global HQ: Sunnyvale, California, US
Website: www.amd.com
Global leader: Dirk Meyer, president and CEO
Local leader: Caleb Leung, country manager, ANZ
Core businesses: Microprocessor, integrated chip, PC motherboard, graphic chip design and manufacturing
Revenue: US$5.8 billion (FY08 ended December 27)
Key customers: Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Nintendo
Employees: 14,700

Advanced Micro Devices hit a roadblock on its path to profitability during the second fiscal quarter of this year - an ageing inventory of old chips and falling PC prices holds the company hostage, analysts said in July.

At the time, AMD had just narrowed its net loss during the second fiscal quarter of 2009 compared with last year, but the company’s revenue was flat over the first quarter. Analysts said AMD underperformed when compared with archrival Intel, which reported a sequential revenue increase of US$879 million.

Although analysts were disappointed by AMD’s results, they say the company’s future looks positive as it moved to focusing exclusively on chip design.

A full transition to the 45-nanometre process could beef up AMD’s margins, and the new slate of products could put its chips on more desks. The company also needs to get rid of the manufacturing costs associated with GlobalFoundries, analysts say. Teng Fang Yih