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Apr-20-2008

AMD shares flat as analysts see cloudy future

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"A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower-than-expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower-than-expected revenues in all business segments," AMD CFO Bob Rivet said in a statement. (More...)
Buoyed by strong sales across all sectors and markets, Intel reported earnings of $1.44 billion, or 25 cents a share, compared with profit of $1.64 billion, or 28 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. (More...)
Guidance for the next quarter was, in a word, poor. (More...)
AMD lost $358m ('180m) between January and March, even though sales were up 22% on the same period a year ago. (More...)
On April 19, 2007, the stock was up 0.8% after revenues decline vs a year ago and the company guides for revs in line to up slightly. (More...)
Revenue advanced 22 per cent to $1.51-billion from $1.23-billion. (More...)
The main fly in Intel's soup was the decline in NAND prices, which, when coupled with flat NAND shipments, made for a net operating loss. (More...)
The numbers were well in line with what analysts had anticipated. (More...)
AMD also announced plans Thursday to cut 420 jobs companywide, including 215 positions in Austin. (More...)
The source of AMD's microprocessor losses was a decline in shipments (average selling prices remained flat), which AMD described as "seasonal." (More...)
The global company has about 17,000 workers, and in 2007, the company lost about $3.3 billion. (More...)
The bottom line will be impacted by a 'restructuring charge' the company will assume during the quarter. (More...)
Net income of $643 and $0.85 EPS beat street estimates and pushed the stock up. (More...)

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"A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower-than-expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower-than-expected revenues in all business segments," AMD CFO Bob Rivet said in a statement. Revenue was down 15% sequentially at $1.5 billion, in line with dampened expectations following last week's preannouncement in which the company cut its sales forecast. Despite the bad start to the year, AMD reiterated its commitment to achieve profitability on an operating basis in the third quarter -- a goal executives said will require significant cost reductions every quarter. Given AMD's more than $5 billion of debt, incurred to finance its acquisition of graphics chipmaker ATI, and the high cost of servicing the debt through interest payments, analysts don't expect AMD to post a net profit until 2010. AMD said its gross margin in the first quarter was 42%, down two percentage points from the fourth quarter, due primarily to decreased unit shipments of microprocessors. AMD said the average selling prices of its microprocessors were flat compared to those in the fourth quarter. AMD recently began shipping its new generation of quad-core microprocessors to PC makers Dell DELL and Hewlett-Packard HP, after months of delays owing to a bug in the chip. The delays left AMD shorthanded in its battle against Intel INTC, the world's dominant maker of PC microprocessors. Intel reported results that were slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations and said it achieved particularly strong demand for its server processors. [1] "A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower-than-expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower-than-expected revenues in all business segments," said Chief Financial Officer Bob Rivet in a conference call with investors. Earlier in the month, AMD said it would cut 1,680 jobs, about 10.0% of its workforce. Its shares are worth less than half the $13.47 they fetched a year ago. The stock is still way off its recent high of $42.10 in early 2006, when AMD was pickup up market share from Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) with chips that were seen as more energy-efficient.[2]

Chip maker AMD has announced its Q1 figures and while they'''re not great, they could have been worse. It made a loss of ''358 million, but it lost $1.772 billion during the previous quarter and $611m in Q1 '''07. Having said that, $1.669bn of the Q4 '''07 loss was '''ATI related'''. $1.608bn of this was put down to ''' ATI impairment of goodwill and acquired intangible assets,''' which we take to mean a write-down of the current value of ATI compared to what they paid for it. Robert J. Rivet, AMD'''s Chief Financial officer, gave this comment on the Q1 figures: '''A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower than expected revenues in all business segments.[3]

The company announced revenues of $1.51 billion, compared with $1.23 billion it posted a year ago and the $1.77 billion in revenues it had in the fourth-quarter 2007. AMD posted a $50 million charge, or 8 cents a share, due to its 2006 acquisition of ATI. By the third quarter, it plans to lay off 10 percent of its 16,500-person work force, and Ruiz still believes the company will return to profitability by the second half of 2008. Intel, AMD's main rival in the chip business, posted better than expected quarterly numbers earlier this week. While AMD will continue to focus on its core business of designing and manufacturing x86 microprocessors and graphics technology, Ruiz said the company plans to'scrutinize' other parts of the company that are not turning a profit or not central to its new goals. 'It is clear that our business environment has changed from just the second half of last year when we saw some of our non-core businesses on a path to growth and profitability. That is now questionable,' said Ruiz.[4] Updated from 4:57 p.m. EDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Advanced Micro Devices AMD reported narrower, but still hefty, losses Thursday, as the company limped through the final quarter in which it fielded an incomplete product line. The Sunnyvale, Calif. chipmaker said it would assess its "non-core" businesses, and is prepared to exit businesses that are hampering its ability to get back in the black. "It is clear that our business environment has changed from just the second half of last year, where we saw some of our non-core businesses on a path to growth and profitability that is now questionable," said CEO Hector Ruiz in a post-earnings conference call. "We need to intensely scrutinize all our businesses in order to ensure that our core x86 and graphics products are on a healthy path to leadership and profitability," he said. Ruiz's comments suggests AMD could soon offload its digital television and cell phone chip businesses, as the company searches for ways to stay afloat after six-consecutive quarters of losses and diminishing cash reserves. Last week, the company said it would lop off 10% of its headcount. AMD noted Thursday that it could rustle up about $400 million in cash by selling off older chip manufacturing equipment and some of its real estate if necessary. In the three months ended March 29, AMD posted a net loss of $358 million, or 59 cents, a share, vs. a net loss of $611 million, or $1.11 a share, at this time last year.[1] The company is looking to a server chip code-named Barcelona to help reverse market share losses to Intel. The chip had been hampered by a flaw that has since been fixed. AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz said on a conference call that while there no details to announce immediately, they would be coming in the next three months, or by the end of the year. "We believe will also have an opportunity to further restructure the company for increased focus and added flexibility, which places us in a better position to deliver sustainable, profitable growth," Ruiz said, noting that he hopes to "communicate details in the near future." AMD, based in Sunnyvale, California, said its first-quarter net loss narrowed to $358 million, or 59 cents a share, from $611.0 million, or $1.11 a share, a year ago.[5]

In a conference call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Robert Rivet said AMD plans to be profitable on an operating basis in the second half of the year. AMD has lost $4 billion since late 2006, when it was taking market share from its chief rival, Intel Corp. Since then, however, AMD has stumbled, with delayed product rollouts and the debt from its $5.4 billion purchase of graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies Inc. Aside from the job cuts, AMD chief executive Hector Ruiz said the company will take a hard look at noncore businesses -- primarily graphics chip development for consumer electronics products -- and exit those businesses if they aren't on a path of profitability. Ruiz said the company is making progress on a plan to reduce its sizable investment in its manufacturing operations in Europe, but he declined to discuss details.[6]

Gross margin in the first quarter was 42 per cent, down from 44 per cent in the fourth quarter, but up from 28 per cent in the year-ago period. AMD, based in Sunnyvale, California, warned April 7 that it would cut 10 per cent of its work force, or about 1,680 jobs, and gave a first-quarter revenue estimate below expectations, sending its shares down as much as 5 per cent that day. "On the positive side, If AMD is successful in ramping Barcelona, they can stem further market share loss to Intel," Mr. Kumar said. "But again, they only have a six to nine month window, then Intel ramps Nehalem and the pressure is on again." Citing far lower-than-expected sales across its businesses, AMD estimated revenue for the quarter ended March 29 at about $1.5-billion, well below the average analyst forecast at the time of $1.62-billion, according to Reuters Estimates.[7] A weak first quarter has yielded a sixth consecutive quarterly loss at struggling chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The company posted revenue of $1.51 billion for its first fiscal quarter of 2008, ended March 29, and a net loss of $358 million, or $0.59 per share.[8] AMD reported first quarter 2008 revenue of $1.505 billion, a net loss of $358 million, or $0.59 per share, and an operating loss of $264 million. These results include an impact of $50 million, or $0.08 per share, from ATI acquisition-related charges.[9] In the first quarter of 2007, AMD reported revenue of $1.233 billion, a net loss $611 million, and an operating loss of $504 million. AMD will hold a conference call for the financial community at 2:00 p.m. PT (5:00 p.m. ET) today to discuss its first quarter financial results. AMD will provide a real-time audio broadcast of the teleconference on the Investor Relations page of its Web site at http://www.amd.com/.[9]

Most of the company's senior management team lives and works here, even though AMD's official headquarters is in Sunnyvale, Calif. Top executives were expected to discuss the downsizing on a conference phone call with financial analysts this afternoon, after it reports first quarter financial results. AMD said last week that it will report quarterly revenue of $1.5 billion,below its original estimate. AMD's business was hurt last year when the company stumbled in introducing its two most important computer processor chips. Those delayed chips are now shipping and analysts expect AMD's sales will pick up over the next several quarters.[10] Twenty-four analysts had consensus revenue estimate of $1.50 billion for the company's first quarter. Earlier this month, AMD cut its first quarter revenue forecast, citing lower than expected sales across all business segments, and said it plans to reduce 10% of its workforce by the third quarter of 2008.[11] AMD chief financial officer Robert Rivet said the seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a "challenging" economic environment for consumers and poor sales of previous generation products resulting in lower than expected revenues in all business segments. "We remain committed to achieve operating profitability in the second half of the year, driven by our portfolio of new products and platforms and aggressive restructuring programs," he said.[12] 'A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower than expected revenues in all business segments,' said chief financial officer Bob Rivet in a statement. During a conference call with analysts, AMD chief executive officer Hector Ruiz announced that all business units are being scrutinized at this time.[13] "A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower than expected revenues in all business segments," Rivet said. AMD's losses for the quarter included $50 million in charges related to its ATI acquisition.[14] 'A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower than expected revenues in all business segments,' Robert Rivet, AMD's Chief Financial officer, said Thursday in a statement.[11] The company's explanation for the bad results was barely in English. ''' A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower than expected revenues in all business segments."[15]

During that time, the company lost $4.311 billion on revenue of $9.288 billion. The most likely target for AMD's ax will be its small consumer electronics business, which recorded just $81 million in revenuee for the first quarter. That proved to be a decline of 26 percent and 31 percent, respectively, from the fourth quarter and first quarter of 2007.[16] AMD's Computing Group recorded $1.194 billion in revenue, meanwhile, and the graphics business recorded $230 million in revenue. Both businesses showed double-digit revenue declines from the fourth quarter, but both showed sharp increases over the first quarter: 30 percent for the computing group, and 17 percent for the graphics business.[16]

Advanced Micro Devices (nyse: AMD - news - people ) reported a loss of $358.0 million, or 59 cents per share, as compared with losses of $611.0 million, or $1.11 a share in the first quarter of 2007. AMD recorded a one-time charge of $50 million, or 8 cents per share, from acquisition costs related to its purchase of ATI Technologies, a maker of graphics chips.[2] SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Advanced Micro Devices Inc.' s first-quarter loss matched Wall Street's lowered expectations, with the slumping chip maker hurt by its inability to unload older products and economic turbulence that tamped down consumer spending. The Sunnyvale-based company said Thursday that it lost $358 million, or 59 cents per share, during the first three months of the year, its sixth quarterly loss in a row.[17] While Advanced Micro Devices Inc.' s first-quarter loss met Wall Street's expectations, analysts Friday wondered about the semiconductor maker's ability to grow and improve its product line in a tepid market. Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ) analyst James Covello kept a "Sell" rating on the Sunnyvale, Calif., company, citing its "inferior" products, large debt load and projected $300 million cash burn for the second quarter. Some in the industry have called for AMD to outsource its chip making to third-party manufacturers, a strategy known as "asset-lite." Covello said he is unsure if that is the best move.[18]

The firm said that second quarter results would be down. AMD still carries long-term debt of over $5 billion and with operating losses it remains difficult to see how the company can attack an amount of that magnitude while still investing aggressively in R&D.; Larger rival Intel (NASDAQ: INTC ) has the balance sheet and cash flow to continue to launch new chips, many of which have features superior to those of AMD products.[19] Lengthy product delays have also hurt AMD's ability to win new customers and steal market share from Intel. AMD's new Opteron server chip — critical to the company's financial recovery — was delayed for 8 months after its official launch in September because of technical glitches. They didn't roll out in force until this month, when Hewlett-Packard Co. began shipping servers with the new chips. Wall Street was bracing for more bad news from AMD, so the fact that its losses weren't any deeper than analysts feared helped lift the stock 9 cents to $6.28 in after-hours trading.[17] "The stock is up due to a bit of relief that things weren't worse," said CRT Capital Group analyst Ashok Kumar. AMD, which lost market share to Intel last year as its chip-making technology lagged that of its larger rival, said its first-quarter net loss actually narrowed to $358 million, or 59 cents a share, from $611.0 million, or $1.11 a share, a year ago.[20] For the first quarter, AMD posted a net loss of $538 million, or 59 cents a share, which was down from the $611 million, or $1.11 a share, loss the company posted a year ago.[4] For the first quarter of 2008, the company reported a net loss of $358 million, or 59 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $611 million, or $1.11 a share, for the year-earlier period.[19] The Sunnyvale, California-based company reported a GAAP net loss of $358 million or $0.59 per share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $611 million or $1.11 per share for the year-ago quarter and a GAAP net loss of $1.8 billion or $3.06 per share for the previous sequential quarter.[11] The company said today that it expects to return to operating profitability in the second half of the year. Sunnyvale, California-based AMD reported a narrower loss for its first-quarter of $358 million, or 59 cents per share, compared to a $611.0 million loss, or $1.11 a year earlier.[12] Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) reported a first-quarter net loss of $358 million, or 59 cents a share, compared with a net loss of of $611 million, or $1.11 a share, a year earlier.[21] Sunnyvale, Calif. -based Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said that during the quarter it lost $358 million, or 59 cents per share, compared with a loss of $611 million, or $1.11 per share, in the same period a year earlier.[22]

On average, 26 analysts polled by First Call / Thomson Financial expected the company to report a loss of $0.51 per share for the first quarter. This marks the sixth consecutive quarterly loss for the company starting with the last quarter of 2006, and AMD has racked up more than $4 billion in losses in these six quarters.[11] Analysts currently expect the company to report a loss of $0.46 per share on revenue of $1.50 billion for the second quarter.[11]

The Intel-Jr. of the chip world reported Q1 2008 revenue of $1.505 billion and a net loss of $358 million, or $0.59 per share.[15] The company's net revenue was $1.51 billion with a net loss of $358 million, an improvement over the first quarter of 2007's net loss of $611 million.[23] First the bad news. On Thursday AMD finalized its Q1 2008 results, posting a net loss of $358 million -- the sixth consecutive quarterly loss. That's down 15 percent from the previous quarter, but up 22 percent from Q1 2007. AMD recently announced it would be laying off 10 percent of its 16,000-person workforce to help control costs and hasten the company's return to profitability, which it expects to do in the second half of the 2008.[24] Google has completely silenced the cynics. Chip maker AMD reported its sixth quarterly loss in a row, though its sales were up 22 percent over the first quarter a year ago. It lost $358 million between January and March.[25] Thursday, AMD reported that it lost $358 million on revenue of $1.5 billion in the first quarter.[6] Sunnyvale, Calif. -based AMD (NYSE:AMD) reported revenue of $1.5 billion for the first three months of the year, a 22 percent increase over the first quarter of 2007.[26]

First quarter revenue from the company's computing solutions segment increased 30% year over year to $1.2 billion, with microprocessor unit shipments remaining higher and average selling price remaining flat. During the first quarter, AMD began volume shipments of its Quad-Core Opteron processors after technical glitches were resolved. The company had begun revenue shipments of the processors in the third quarter of 2007, but a technical glitch and other factors delayed its volume shipments.[11] The company lost $358m between January and March 2008, as it struggled to catch up with Intel's latest technical advances in 45nm manufacturing. AMD posted revenues of $1.51bn for its first quarter, compared to $1.23bn a year ago and $1.77bn for the fourth quarter of 2007.[27]

The job cuts will affect workers at all levels and in all parts of the country, AMD has said. The company said last week it would cut 10 percent of its 16,800 jobs worldwide by the end of September. Today's cut primarily affected company workers in North America, but eventually the company expects almost all its global operations will be affected. The chip-maker announced the staff reductions last week as a way to reduce its costs in line with expectations of reduced revenue this year. Wall Street investment analysts have urged the company to get its costs under tighter control as the company struggled with the $5.4 billion acquisition of ATI Technologies Inc. in late 2006 and with tougher competition from its larger and richer arch-rival Intel Corp.[10] The poor results came as no shock to industry analysts, who were warned last week that AMD would miss earnings expectations by about $100m. AMD chief executive Hector Ruiz said that the chip firm is addressing its loss making situation with additional restructuring. The company recently announced job cuts of 16,800, around 10 per cent of its global workforce.[27]

The firm brought in revenues of $1.51bn, but made a net loss of $358m and an operating loss of $264m. The loss comes as no surprise - AMD said earlier in the month that it would cut one in ten jobs after suffering from falling sales across its whole business. It hit its lowered targets for the period, which were 15 per cent down on the fourth quarter.[28] In the fourth quarter of 2007, AMD reported revenue of $1.770 billion, a net loss of $1.772 billion, and an operating loss of $1.678 billion.[9]

There were very few surprises in last night's earnings report from Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD ). We already knew that first-quarter revenue would fall right around $1.5 billion, and you could tell from a mile away that there would be a net loss in the company's pockets.[29]

Revenue was pegged at $1.50 billion by Wall Street, after a warning from the company last week. AMD remains a generation behind Intel in its chipmaking technology, but if AMD can ramp up production of its Barcelona server chips their competitive price could help the company regain market share.[5] Revenue was pegged at $1.50-billion. The poor results came as Intel and other high-tech companies, such as International Business Machines Corp., have recently posted positive earnings. AMD remains a generation behind Intel in its chip making technology, but if AMD can ramp up production of its Barcelona server chips their competitive price could help the company regain market share.[7]

John Spooner, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said that the consumer electronics division makes products for televisions, cell phone handsets and other devices, and has pulled in about $100 million in revenue during the last few quarters. He added that the company has wanted the division to make more money and now might be a good time for AMD to look for a buyer for the business. 'It makes sense because it's not a core part of their business, and they can't really afford to focus on consumer electronics at this point,' said Spooner. In addition to looking at non-essential businesses, Ruiz said the company is still working on its 'asset-lite' or 'asset-smart' strategy, which appears will help the company when it comes to manufacturing.[4] Most of the company's senior management team lives and works in Austin even though AMD's official headquarters is in Sunnyvale. AMD's business was hurt last year when the company stumbled in introducing its two most important computer processor chips. Those delayed chips are now shipping, and analysts expect AMD's sales to pick up over the next several quarters. Executives said that the new products should bolster profit margins but that they were wary about consumer demand in the seasonally weak second quarter.[6] The other significant products push from AMD is the notebook market. During its call, AMD executives said that their company, more than Intel, is subject to the whims of consumer spending and in the slowing U.S. economy. The company wants to have a strong notebook offering to help it capture both consumer dollars as well as the SMB (small and midsized business) market. In the second quarter, AMD will launch its ?Puma? platform for notebooks, which includes a dual-core processor called Turion Ultra and new Radeon graphics and chip set. Meyer said this week that AMD already has a number of design wins from OEMs and it's hoping to capitalize on the still-healthy notebook market for later this year.[30]

'In addition, the fact is that the Puma platform has enjoyed some design wins in terms of SMBs giving us an opportunity to grow our share in the back half of the year,' Meyer added. For desktops, AMD began offering both its quad-core and tri-core Phenom processors late in the first quarter, but the shipments did not seem to help its sales. The company hopes to continue to ramp up these processors in the second quarter and also enter the commercial client space with a new platform called 'Perseus,' which AMD believes can make inroads in a market traditional controlled by Intel.[30]

The only sour note was that net income dropped 12 percent compared to a year ago. Since Intel is currently the only chipmaker delivering 45nm chips, the company has been using its technology leadership to gain back market share from AMD. If AMD manages to deliver 45nm processors in the second half of the year, the horse race will start anew. By then, or soon afterwards, Intel will be shipping the first Nehalem-generation processors, throwing yet another hurdle into its rival's path.[24] This now make sit six reports in a row that AMD has clearly been losing its market share to rivals Intel, despite better sales than this time a year ago. The twenty two percent increase in sales on this time last year however was not even enough to break even as the chip company had to divulge information it had lost ''180 million in the last three months.[31]

Investors were also hoping for more details about AMD's restructuring plans. The company has been hinting for a year that it is thinking about offloading some of its manufacturing duties to third-party factories to save money, but has so far not divulged any details. AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz would only say Thursday that the company is "on a fast pace" toward further restructuring and hopes to make an announcement soon about its manufacturing strategy. AMD's stock is still way off its recent high of $42.10 in early 2006, when AMD was steadily stealing market share from Intel with chips that were seen as more energy-efficient.[17]

Broken out by business group, AMD's computing solutions unit, the company's top performing operation, reported Q1 sales of $1.19 billion, down 15% quarter over quarter and up 30% year over year. The computing solutions unit recently released its Barcelona server chips (officially known as quad-core Opteron processors) to the broad channel and noted a significant deal with Hewlett-Packard.[32] Chip manufacturer AMD lost US538 million during its first quarter of the financial year, even though revenues grew by 22% from 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion. One factor contributing to AMD's loss has been a fault in its quad-core Opteron server chip, code-named Barcelona.[33] AMD's graphics segment revenue for the first quarter rose 17% from last year to $230 million, while consumer electronic segment revenue fell 31% to $81 million.[11]

Despite the economic downturn, Intel and IBM seemed relatively unscathed by all the doom and gloom talk. Sure, AMD was in the red for the first quarter -- as expected -- but its declining revenue was mainly the result of Intel's success and a year and a half of missteps. Meanwhile both IBM and Intel beat analyst forecasts for the quarter and are projecting respectable growth for the rest of 2008.[24] Wall Street was pleased the bleeding was no worse, but there was no celebrating as analysts wanted more information but didn't get it about how the company plans to turn itself around, reports The Associated Press on Newsvine.com. Earlier this week, IBM raised its profit forecast for the year after posting net profits of $2.32 billion, an increase of 26 percent over the the first quarter of 2007, reports vnunet.com, noting Intel also posted rosy numbers in the quarter.[25] The mid-point of the company's second quarter revenue forecast is $9.3 billion, while analysts currently expect the company to post revenue of $9.23 billion for the second quarter. Intel on Tuesday reiterated its full year 2008 gross margin forecast of 57% plus or minus a few points.[11]

Despite the "sky-is-falling" weather forecasts and slowdown-induced panic that the bottom is falling out of PC demand, Intel managed to pull out a solid first quarter with record revenues of $9.7 billion, up 9% year-over-year, and income of $1.4 billion, or 25 cents a share, down 12%.[34] I missed Intel's earnings call because I was traveling, but on Tuesday the chipmaker announced record revenues of $9.67 billion on record server earnings and strong North American and global demand. That's a 9 percent increase vs. the first quarter of 2007 and 10 percent decrease vs. the previous quarter due to seasonal factors.[23] Overall, Intel announced first quarter revenue of 9.7 billion, operating income of $2.1 billion and net income of $1.4 billion.[24]

Despite a report showing a continuing decline in Google's paid click rate, Google's net income jumped 31 percent in the first quarter to $1.31 billion and revenue swelled 42 percent to $5.19 billion compared with the same period last year.[25] GAAP operating loss for the first quarter was $264 million, compared to GAAP operating loss of $504 million in the first quarter of last year and GAAP operating loss of $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter.[11] Non-GAAP operating loss for the first quarter was $214 million, compared to non-GAAP operating loss of $391 million in the prior year quarter and non-GAAP operating loss of $9 million in the prior quarter.[11]

The loss was the sixth in a row for the company but less than the $611 million in red ink that AMD reported for the first quarter of 2007.[6]

The first batch of Barcelona chips contained a memory-handling flaw that required a software work-around. This reduced performance by as much as 10% according to some estimates, discouraging adoption and forcing the company to spend more money to fix the fault in the second batch. The company announced earlier in the month that it would be cutting staff by 10% to reduce its operating costs. AMD's arch-rival Intel has reported strong results for its first financial quarter that beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts.[33] The bad results were in line with analyst expectations. AMD had warned the financial community last week that it would miss earnings expectations by about $100 million, blaming lower-than-expected results because of poor sales across all segments of its business. AMD plans to lay off 10 percent of its 16,800-employee workforce by the third quarter of 2008.[8] Sales of $1.51 billion were 22 percent higher than last year and in line with analysts' expectations. AMD warned earlier this month that sales across all business lines were lower than it earlier anticipated. It also announced plans to jettison 10 percent of its global work force, or about 1,600 workers, by September.[17]

Banc of America Securities analyst Sumit Dhanda also kept a "Sell" rating, and worried the company's recently announced restructuring plan, which includes layoffs, may not help in the long run. "While we welcome management's (belated) focus on controlling cost, we remain skeptical regarding AMD's ability to produce a sustainable improvement in its business in light of mounting competitive pressures," Dhanda said in a note to clients. He kept a $5 price target. Shares rose 15 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $6.33 in premarket trading. they closed at $6.19 on Thursday.[18] Through mid-morning trading, Intel is up $1, to $22 per share. Other chip companies are following suit. Although Intel'''s net income fell by 12% for the quarter, thanks to costs incurred in the company'''s recent restructuring campaign, the company says its financial picture is a bright one, as is the financial outlook for the entire semiconductor industry.[35] SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.N: Quote, Profile, Research ) posted its sixth consecutive quarterly net loss on Thursday as the chip maker continued to lose market share to far larger rival Intel Corp (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research ). Shares of the company ticked higher in extended trading as its general comments on the second quarter were in line with normal seasonal trends.[20] Intel; with the production of evermore advanced chips could well destroy AMD'''s market share. Hopefully Mr Ruiz has a plan to pull this flagging company from the brink and return it to prosperity. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.[31]

Despite the company's international job cuts and disappointing revenue figures, AMD plans to expand the local operation. He says this may not happen until the company has stabilised globally, but discussions around expanding into other parts of Africa are under way. The chipmaker has struggled to maintain market share against competitor Intel since it acquired its graphics division, ATI. Last week the company announced it would cut around 10% of its global workforce, amounting to 1 680 jobs globally.[36] AMD's fortunes are in stark contrast with that of Intel and other tech companies, which have reported robust earnings in recent weeks. The company recently announced that it would cut 10% of its global work force, with a loss of about 1,600 jobs.[37]

Concern over the company's direction has not deterred a planned $3.2 billion chip factory near Albany, N.Y. AMD has until July 2009 to commit to the project and will receive $1.2 billion in state incentives. AMD officials have said this year's job cuts will not impact the project, which should employ about 1,465 people.[38]

The results included charges of $50m related to the acquisition of ATI, while delayed shipments of Barcelona, the new version of AMD's Opteron chip also hit revenues. The company expects further decline this quarter due to an imminent restructuring charge and in line with seasonal trends.[39] The poor results came even as Intel and other high-tech companies like International Business Machines Corp have so far posted generally positive earnings. "In the seasonally down second quarter, AMD expects revenue to decrease in line with seasonality," the company said in its financial results report.[20] Intel CEO Paul Otellini described the global market environment as "solid," with "industry demand strong" and "nothing unusual" happening, reinforcing the idea that AMD's particular purgatory is unique to that company. It can find much of its business at Intel. Intel said it saw record server MPU revenues in the quarter when AMD was still unable to deliver its rival Barcelona chip in quantity and is eating Intel's 45nm dust.[34]

"The first quarter was a difficult quarter for AMD," said the company's CFO in the call's opening. He went on to describe lower than expected revenues across all segments of the company's microprocessor business, before concluding, "we are obviously unhappy with the results."[23] AMD chief finance officer Robert Rivet said: "A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products[28] "A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products," said CFO Bob Rivet. That's bad news across every product line and end customer.[29]

Author: Rozalina Destanova 123jump.com Last Update: 9:11 AM EDT April 19 2008 In a seasonally weak quarter amplified by a challenging global economic environment for consumers and softening demand for previous generation products, the company experienced lower than expected revenues across each of business segments.[40]

Of course, AMD isn't relying solely on cost-cutting to return itself to profitability. This quarter the company announced new graphics and processor products, with the most critical of these announcements being the B3 stepping of its quad-core processors. Though B3 has been on the market only a few weeks, AMD claimed that consumer and end-user response to it has been "fantastic," and it expects to ramp up production of its B3 parts and its new GPUs over the next 13 weeks. This would mean that the products announced this quarter would impact the company's bottom line this summer.[23] The full release of the new Opteron should help the company within the multiprocessor server space as well as within HPC (high-performance computing) thanks to the chip's floating point capabilities. From there, Meyer said the company is working toward manufacturing its first 45-nanometer processors ' Shanghai ' which should give AMD a performance boost within it chips, and it also give the company a chance to produce smaller chips that use less power. AMD plans to begin ramping up its 45-nanometer production in the summer with the first products appearing in the fourth quarter.[30] For AMD, the future of the company is all about products, products, products. A good mix of products can help the Sunnyvale, Calif., company, but it's also planning to trim its work force, reduce spending and possibly jettison unprofitable divisions in order to return to financial stability. During the call, Ruiz reiterated his call for AMD to return to profitability by the end of 2008. For the rest of the year, AMD plans to focus on its core business of x86 microprocessors for servers and PCs as well as its graphics business, which it has been building since it purchased graphics chip maker ATI in 2006. AMD is beginning to ramp up what it calls the B3 version of its quad-core Opteron processor for servers, which fixes a design flaw in the silicon that delayed its release in 2007.[30] AMD reported Q1 gross margin of 42 percent, down a few ticks sequentially from 44 percent but well north of the devastating quarter that kicked off 2007, when AMD tanked to the tune of 28 percent gross margins. Ruiz stuck by a pledge made last December to return AMD to profitability by the conclusion of the third quarter of this year. He and Rivet pointed to the volume shipment of the glitch-corrected B3 version of AMD's quad-cores, a new mobile PC platform codenamed Puma and the "gaining traction" of the chip maker's unique triple-core product as drivers of that return to profitability.[14]

If, as the report seems to be asking us to, we take the slight drop-off in gross margin as an aberration, the trend is steady improvement in gross margin. It wants to be as Intel is showing no signs of letting up. As previously discussed, AMD'''s hopes of turning things around lie primarily in improvements in its product execution. It has a lot of very promising products on the way this year and if it can deliver fully functional ones in timely fashion it may well achieve its aim of making a profit for the first time in six quarters and counting.[3]

Because management expects profits before letting 45nm processors out the door, I'm thinking that the fourth quarter in particular should be cheerful indeed -- if AMD can deliver on that road map. Until then, this stock is a classic value play that trades at just a little over 50% of its expected forward revenue; Intel is going for around 3 times forward sales.[29] In a press release, AMD revealed that shipments of microprocessors decreased compared with the fourth quarter 2007, but increased versus the first quarter of 2007. AMD's ATI graphics division recorded increased unit sales over both Q4'07 as well as Q1'07. The problem is that in both the microprocessor and graphics businesses, the average unit selling price either fell or remained flat -- meaning that AMD's revenue per unit decreased. Specifically, microprocessor ASPs remained flat compared to both the fourth quarter and first quarter 2007, while the average selling price of ATI's graphics chips declined versus the fourth quarter, and remained flat versus the fourth quarter of 2007.[16] Ironically, AMD's prospects actually got a boost from Intel's Q1 results, which seemed to suggest that x86 chip demand is firm, even in the weaker U.S. market. CEO Paul Otellini noted that they saw revenue growth worldwide, but the strong server demand in the U.S. boosted North American sales by 17 percent compared to last year.[24] According to him, the server farm buildout from companies like Google (which just reported a 43 percent revenue jump) is boosting chip sales. In the consumer space, it looks like the mobile PC market will eclipse the desktop market this year, and not next year as Intel had originally thought. This development will also help sustain sales volumes in 2008.[24]

Buoyed by strong sales across all sectors and markets, Intel reported earnings of $1.44 billion, or 25 cents a share, compared with profit of $1.64 billion, or 28 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. [35] The world's biggest chipmaker reported net income for the first quarter of $1.4 billion or $0.25 per share, compared to $1.6 billion or $0.28 per share for the year-ago quarter and $2.3 billion or $0.38 per share for the previous sequential quarter.[11] Excluding the charges, non-GAAP net loss for the latest first quarter was $308 million or $0.51 per share.[11] The latest first quarter results include ATI-acquisition related charges of $50 million or $0.08 per share.[11]

The good news is that the losses were smaller than the $1.11 loss per share a year ago, or the $3.06 per-share pain of last quarter.[29]

The company had a net loss of $611 million a year ago and $1.77 billion in the fourth quarter.[41] Total AMD sales were accompanied by a net loss of $358 million, a significant improvement on Q4 2007's net loss of nearly $1.8 billion and also an improvement compared to Q1 2007's net loss of $611 million.[32]

AMD piled another $358 million in losses to more than $4 billion it has already lost since the end of 2006. It has also lost market share in the chip market against its closest rival Intel during the period.[12] AMD shares slipped 4 cents to $6.15, while shares of leading chip maker Intel rose 43 cents to $22.54.[42] Stripping out 8 cents per share in one-time charges connected to AMD's acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies, the company lost 51 cents per share in the latest period, matching the average estimate on the same basis from analysts polled by Thomson Financial.[17] Analysts, on average, expected a loss of 51 cents per share on sales of $1.5 billion, according to a Thomson Financial poll.[22] On average, analysts had expected the chip maker of reporting a loss of 48 cents a share on revenue of $1.52 billion, according to FactSet Research.[21] The chip maker, which said it continued to struggle through "a challenging economic environment," was expected by analysts, on average, to report a loss of 48 cents a share on revenue of $1.52 billion.[43]

Analysts had expected the chipmaker to report a loss of 48 cents a share on revenue of $1.52 billion, according to FactSet Research."[19]

The results showed EPS of $1.45, well above Thomson Financial expectation of $1.22 EPS. Shares were up 8% at $85.02 going into the close. For the second quarter in the row, the bank showed a loss, this time $5.11 billion off of revenues of $13.22 billion.[44] The Thomson FC mean is for a loss of $0.51 per share on $1.5 billion in revenue.[45] The company's quarterly loss per share came in line with analysts' expectations so did its quarterly revenue.[11] AMD's adjusted loss per share was 51 cents, compared with analysts' average expectation of a loss of 47 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.[7] Shares of AMD have fallen 55 per cent in the last 12 months, based on Wednesday's closing prices, compared with a 7 per cent gain for Intel. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index is down 22 per cent over the same period. Intel stock trades at about three times its estimated 2008 sales, compared with 0.55 for AMD, according to Reuters Estimates.[7] "I was encouraged by the comments about aggressive restructuring," said American Technology Research analyst Doug Freedman of comments made on the Thursday conference call. Intel stock trades at about 3.0 times its estimated 2008 sales, compared with 0.55 times for AMD, according to Reuters Estimates.[5]

On Jan. 18, 2005 AMD slid 1.8% in after-hours trade after the company posted a loss, reported revenue just ahead of estimates, and forecast flat to lower sales. The stock fought its way out of the red on Jan. 19, ultimately ending the regular session at the flat line.[45] Back on April 13, 2005 AMD advanced 1.5% in night trade after the company reported a decline in sales vs. a year ago and posted a loss. The stock saw its after-hours gains evaporate in next-day trade and ended the April 14 session down 4.7%.[45] On July 13, 2005 AMD advanced 3.2% in night trade after the company reported sales flat with year ago levels and a decline in earnings. It failed to move much in either direction off this evening level and ended the July 14 regular session up the same 3.2%.[45]

Although Advanced Micro Devices reported lower revenues in line with its previous warning, the company recorded yet another loss on flat to declining sale prices. That prompted chief executive Hector Ruiz in a conference call Thursday to announce that the company would scrutinize each of its businesses, and either sell off or otherwise exit those that were not in line with the company's core operations. The decision is "an addition" to the restructuring plan the company announced in its earlier earnings warning, he said.[16]

A separate foundry function might enable it to compete with Intel without the capital required to keep up from a manufacturing standpoint (this would be funded by investments from the asset smart partner under the foundry company). Another approach may be that AMD partner with foundries such as existing partners TSMC (for ATI) and Chartered as part of asset lite," Luke said. Looking ahead to Q2 numbers, AMD said it expects its revenue to decrease in line with seasonality. AMD's stock was trading at $6.15 at noon eastern today, down slightly from its Thursday close of $6.19.[32] "We continue to believe that an asset-lite strategy will further exacerbate AMD's inferior products given the difficultly of optimizing chip speeds when design and manufacturing teams work for different companies," Covello said in a note to clients. While AMD says it could raise $400 million by selling some assets, including land, a cash crunch seems "inevitable" unless core products are improved, he said. "The equity market is too complacent about an eventual bankruptcy," said Covello, who kept a $5 price target, implying he expects the stock to drop 19 percent from Thursday's $6.19 close.[18]

In the past year, the stock price hit a high of $16.19 per share but fell to around $6 per share Thursday. AMD leaders have tried to turn the tide with a recent announcement to slice 10 percent of its 16,420-member work force.[38] AMD lost $611 million, or $1.11 per share, in the same period last year.[17]

Excluding charges related to the company's 2006 acquisition of graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies, losses were $308 million, or $0.51 per share.[8] The company's stock rose 2.4 percent to $6.34 per share in after-hours trading.[26] Elsewhere, shares of Emcore Corp. lost 2 cents to $6.97 following the chip maker's analyst day. Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Sam Dubinsky said in an interview that the stock is now in "show me mode" and that it's time for the company to delivery on numbers, particular in its solar sector.[42] Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Rick Schafer said in an investor note that AMD's results point to continued market share los for the chip maker. He advocated a cautious stance on AMD, noting "strong momentum from a revitalized Intel."[42] Intel's profits are improving because it has made a speedy transition to a new chip-making technology that lowers the cost of production. AMD lags Intel in making its own transition to the 45-nanometer manufacturing process, which means the chips' circuitry is shrunken to an average size of 45 billionths of a meter. Smaller circuitry means chips cost less to make and they can hold more transistors. AMD said its 45-nanometer products are expected in the second half of 2008. In reporting first-quarter results Tuesday, Intel kept its profit-margin expectations for 2008 intact, a sunny forecast that indicates the company is tightly controlling its pricing and manufacturing costs while AMD continues to stumble.[17] The two companies are working on creating AMD's 45- nanometer manufacturing technology, which the chip company plans to ramp by summer to deliver products in the fourth quarter.[4]

For more than six months, Ruiz and his executives have talked about the asset-smart strategy, but have provided few details. Spooner and other industry observers believe AMD is working toward some sort of manufacturing partnership with another company to take some of financial burden off of its bottom line. This will allow AMD to focus on processor design and marketing. It's not clear what partners AMD would use, but it does have a relationship with IBM to develop new chip technology.[4]

Ruiz said that the reduction in workforce as well as selling business units will have the goal to bring down the quarterly break even requirement to about $1.5 billion. The company wants to achieve this goal before the announcement of the ' Asset Light ' program. Ruiz confirmed that AMD still believes that it can achieve a profit in the second half of this year.[13] One after the other, analysts tried with varying degrees of subtlety to get some whiff of a hint of what, if anything, AMD actually means by "asset light" or "asset smart," only to be serially rebuffed by the AMD reps on the call. Whatever "asset smart" means, Ruiz made clear that the workforce reduction and the newly revealed restructuring would begin to show results by this summer, and would result in a break-even point of $1.5 billion.[23]

Or, again in plain English, by cutting costs AMD will lower the threshold for profitability from the previous mark of $2 billion in quarterly revenue down to $1.5 billion, which will make it easier for the company to declare itself profitable in the face of slow consumer demand and lower revenues.[23] The loss included $50 million in AT-related charges, $8 million from the firm's graphics unit and $11 million from consumer electronics operations. Revenue was $1.51 billion, about $500 million less than what is generally believed the company currently needs to hit a break even at its current cost structure.[13]

AMD's graphics unit saw revenue of $230 million, down 11% from Q4 and up 17% from Q1 2007. This unit includes ATI, which AMD purchased in October 2006 for approximately $5.4 billion.[32]

Sunnyvale-based AMD (NYSE: AMD) had $1.5 billion in revenue, up from the year-ago quarter's $1.23 billion.[43] Overall, AMD's revenues were down 15% sequentially at $1.5 billion but up 22% year over year.[32]

Revenue for the first quarter increased 22% to $1.51 billion from $1.23 billion in the same quarter last year.[11] The company also recently lowered first-quarter earnings expectations to $15 billion, a 22 percent increase compared with the first quarter of 2007 and a 15 percent decrease compared with the fourth quarter of 2007.[38] First quarter revenue decreased 15 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2007 and increased 22 percent compared to the first quarter of 2007.[46] First quarter revenue was down 22 percent from the first quarter a year ago.[41] First quarter gross margin was 42 percent, down from 44 percent in the fourth quarter but up from 28 percent a year ago.[41]

Quad-core Opteron shipments represented about a quarter of AMD's server product mix in Q1, but should ramp to about 50 percent of that mix "pretty quickly" in Q2, noted Dirk Meyer, president and COO. Meyer said AMD had shipped in "excess of half a million" quad-core parts in the first quarter.[14] If you've been listening to the financial news for the past six months, the future seems pretty grim. In the midst of a worsening U.S. economic situation, IBM, Intel and AMD reported their first quarter 2008 financial results.[24] AMD's bigger rival Intel reported a 12% drop in first quarter earnings, hurt by higher restructuring and asset impairment costs as well as increased provision for income tax.[11]

AMD executives did not elaborate on which markets' sluggish consumer spending hurt it. Research firms Gartner Inc. and IDC reported this week that the growth in PC shipments in the U.S. slowed in the first quarter while growth in PC shipments continued accelerating overseas.[17] The company is particularly pleased with customer response to the B3 version of quad-core AMD Opteron processors in the last few weeks of the first quarter, with 23 SKUs available from multiple OEMs, including HP and Dell, with another tier one OEM coming on board in the second quarter.[40] A few days after last week's earnings warning, the company's chief technology officer, Phil Hester, stepped down, adding to the bad news. AMD had been hoping to turn things around by its second quarter.[8]

The global analyst community touted Barcelona as the company's saving grace. It was re-launched last week and AMD is confident it will provide the company the revenue performance expected by analysts. The company says the silicon chip market has worked in this manner for years, with revenue fluctuations and hardware challenges. AMD is focusing on providing full platforms that function in given verticals, such as multimedia, gaming, graphic development or home.[36] In order to reach profitability despite the larger slowdown, Ruiz promised aggressive cost-cutting and major restructuring measures in addition to the 10 percent workforce reduction that the company announced last week. AMD would be "intensely scrutinizing" all of its non-core businesses, and exiting any that aren't profitable, Ruiz told analysts. The idea behind this scrutiny is to focus on AMD's core x86 and graphics businesses.[23] Rivet in December 2007 promised profitability for the Sunnyvale, Calif-based company by Q3 2008. In a step toward that, AMD earlier this month announced it would lay off 10% of its workforce, cutting some 1,650 jobs. One possible path to profitability would be for AMD to further leverage its fab-lite, or what it calls "asset-smart," strategy or to move to a full fabless model. The company has been committed to its asset-smart strategy for some time, yet has not detailed its plans. On Thursday's conference call, Ruiz said that AMD has made "significant progress" in its asset-smart strategy and that he is "very hopeful that we will be able to communicate details of this rather complex effort in the near future." "Despite a high level of market interest, AMD has, as yet, provided few details around the approach it will take to restructure its manufacturing," Luke noted.[32] Thursday, hundreds of Austin workers received pink slips. AMD announced they planned to cut 10 percent of their workforce, but at the time, many workers in Austin weren't sure who would be laid off because it is a Global One company. According to TG Daily, a popular technology Web site, 3 to 5 percent of the 10 percent that will be cut will lose their jobs in Central Texas. That means 510 to 850 people.[47]

The plight of AMD is not representative of the technology industry as a whole. While sales have suffered across the board for AMD, other companies such as Intel have released positive reports of earnings for the same period. This does not bode well for AMD employees worldwide; around ten percent of workers will be axed equating to around sixteen hundred jobs.[31]

The job cuts involve more than 1,600 workers out of 16,800 worldwide, according to wire reports. The layoff follows a series of problems at AMD, which has been hit hard by competitive pressures from rival Intel Corp. Last year, AMD had some design problems with its server chip, dubbed Barcelona. It is still having some integration issues with the ill-fated acquisition of ATI.[46] Pathetic. It's a shame that people kick other people when they are down. Those AMD employees put their hearts into their jobs and still get cut loose when the going gets tough. They have no say in anything over there. They work 60 to 80 hours a week. They deserve better. Anyone could have seen this coming - just look at their stock price over the past 2 years. I have friends at AMD. The anti-AMD comments here are irrelevant to the story of these real people who just lost their jobs. I wonder how many of these folks have used or are using AMD products just by posting their comments here? I'm not just talking about the PC in front of them, but at every hop to the Statesman's host. I think it's time for these "environmentalists" to stop talking and start doing. Just to make them happy, for the three wacko's here, I'm putting three weeks of recycling straight into the trash.[10]

Guidance for the next quarter was, in a word, poor. AMD was supposed to have an OK year and start to chip away at some of its $5 billion in debt. [15] Fortunately for ailing chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, a rising tide does lift all boats. While AMD posted its sixth straight quarterly loss after the closing bell on Thursday, it did no worse than the modest expectations investors held for it, and there are signs that the computer industry might be about to turn around. In after-hours trading, AMD shares rose 2 cents, to $6.21, after having gained 2.0%, or 12 cents, in the regular session, where they closed at $6.19.[2] AMD shares, which are trading in the range of $5.31 to $16.19 over the last year, closed Thursday's regular trading session at $6.19, up 12 cents or 1.98% and gained an additional 8 cents or 1.29% in after hours trading.[11]

AMD's results included charges of $50 million, or 8 cents a share, from the ATI acquisition.[41] AMD shares closed up 12 cents, to $6.19, before the results were reported.[17]

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) reports after close today with a conference call scheduled for 5:00 PM EST. The street is bearish, especially after Intel's (INTC) quarter suggested that AMD hemorrhaged share. Shares are down 21% since its last quarter, in which management reported unexpected margin expansion.[48] Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices has reported its sixth quarterly loss in a row as it continues to lose market share to its rival Intel.[37] SAN FRANCISCO - Advanced Micro Devices Inc. posted its sixth consecutive quarterly loss Thursday as the chip maker continued to lose market share to larger rival Intel Corp.[7]

NEW YORK - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc reported is sixth straight quarterly loss on Thursday but share closed nearly 2 percent higher as results met Wall Street analysts expectations. Get stories by e-mail on this topic.[12]

KXAN Austin News first reported almost two weeks ago that Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, planned to cut its workforce.[47] This summary is based on the first quarter fiscal 2008 earnings call conducted by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ( AMD: chart ) on April 17, 2008.[40] AMD just wrapped up their first quarter earnings call, on which they announced their sixth consecutive quarter of losses.[23]

Although the corrected version of the chip appeared too late to help the company's first quarter sales, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have announced several systems that use the new Opteron, and Sun Microsystems, IBM and Fujitsu-Siemens are expected to follow.[30] While the prices of memory chips continued to fall, the company announced profits of $17.9m during the first three months of 2008, a recovery from a $575,000 loss during the same period a year earlier.[37]

"Management, however, noted that the asset-lite deal was expected to be announced in the 'near future,' and we expect the deal may be announced before the summer of 2008. "We believe one approach the company could consider may include selling its fabs to a third party such as the Mubadala Development Company, which has already invested $608 million for 8% stake in AMD," Luke said, noting that Mubadala is a corporation of the government of Abu Dhabi and serves as a vehicle for the capital of the United Arab Emirates to invest directly in publicly traded companies. "As part of such a deal, we believe AMD could consider dividing its activities into a design and foundry company.[32] Lastly, AMD's consumer electronics group, the company's weakest performing segment, saw sales of $81 million in Q1, down 26% from Q4 and down 31% from Q1 2007.[32] The company also said it is considering a restructuring that could involve jettisoning some noncore businesses, as well as other changes. AMD, as it projected earlier this month, reported first-quarter sales that were up 22% from the year-earlier period but 15% lower than the fourth quarter --.[49]

AMD announced the new fabrication strategy almost a year ago, and analysts on today's call seemed (justifiably) frustrated that the company has yet to give any substantial information on the strategy and how it will impact AMD's fab operations and bottom line.[23] The company said 13 OEMs have announced new platforms based on the new Opterons, including HP, Dell and Sun Microsystems. The next three to six months will be crucial for AMD. After that, the company hopes to have its 45nm Opterons ready to go, giving AMD some technological parity with Intel. Of course, it's hard to imagine AMD will make the 65nm to 45nm transition so quickly in the midst of all the personnel and financial upheavals.[24]

AMD is still trying to catch up with Intel's latest technical advances, shrinking micro chips to 45 nanometre manufacturing. Intel had reported a 12% drop in profits to $1.44bn, but predicted "healthy demand" for its processors.[37] The problem for AMD is that rivals Intel have made technological advances that have been hard to compete with. The latest of these advances is a microchip a microscopic 45 nanometres thick. Intel are not completely outdoing their competition however, despite great technological advances they also experienced a drop in profits, believed to be around twelve percent. Another rival, Sandisk who make memory cards and chips also outdid AMD in terms of profits taken for the quarter.[31]

It was the sixth straight quarterly loss for the struggling Sunnyvale, Calif. -based chip maker. An AMD spokesperson confirmed that the company has laid off 420 employees as part of a plan to downsize its 16,420-member work force by 10 percent through the end of Q3.[14] Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD today reported another painful quarterly loss today in what the company called a 'difficult start into the year'.[13] "We will also have an opportunity to further restructure the company for increased focus and added flexibility, which places us in a better position to deliver sustainable, profitable growth," said Ruiz in a conference call on Thursday. AMD will also be hoping that the late arrival of its much anticipated quad-core Opteron processor line will help it bounce back in the second half of 2008, after a design flaw delayed its release last year.[27] AMD shares ticked higher in extended trading as the company said it expects second-quarter revenue to decrease in line with seasonal trends, reassuring investors who had feared a steeper decline.[7] AMD slipped 0.6% the night of July 14, 2004, after company beat revenue expectations and reported EPS in line with estimates.[45]

AMD's main x86 rival Intel reported better-than-expected earnings Tuesday, with profit margin outlook and revenue growth that boosted the stock, according to analysts.[14] Arch rival Intel reported nine per cent growth in revenue with a fall of 12 per cent in profits and forecast a promising second quarter.[39] Looking forward to the second quarter, Intel expects revenue of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion and gross margin of 56% plus or minus a couple of points.[11] Revenue for the quarter was $1.505 billion, down 15 percent compared to Q4 2007 but up 22 percent from Q1 2007.[14] AMD's revenue rose 22 percent to $1.51 billion from $1.23 billion.[22] The 100,000 units shipped in December missed expectations. AMD has already adjusted its revenue guidance down to $1.50 billion from $1.61 billion and has pledged to trim its workforce by 10% (1600 workers) by the end of Q3.[48]

The company said on Thursday that there may be more restructuring in store as it aims to reduce costs so that it can turn a profit on just $1.5 billion in revenue.[5] The company pulled in revenues of $1.5 billion, up 22.0% from the year-ago period.[2]

Revenue was $1.5 billion, down 15% sequentially and up 22% year over year.[40]

Revenue met projections falling 15 per cent year on the year to $1.5bn and 22 per cent on the fourth quarter of 2007.[39] Revenue grew 22 percent to $1.51 million compared to $1.23 in the year ago period.[12] The weak dollar abroad is obviously boosting IBM sales, but even U.S. revenue is on the upswing. Compared to the one percent U.S. revenue growth in Q1 2007, the eight percent growth in this quarter is good news indeed. It's especially significant considering how heavily IBM depends on financial services customers to drive earnings.[24] About two-thirds of IBM sales comes from outside the U.S. So even though the revenue growth in the Americas was a healthy eight percent (to $9.9 billion), in EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) it was 16 percent (to $8.8 billion); and in Asia-Pacific it was 14 percent (to $5.1 billion).[24]

IBM had perhaps the best news of all, reporting revenues of 24.5 billion for the quarter, up 11 percent from Q1 2007.[24] Computing solutions revenue was $1.194 billion, down 15% from the prior quarter.[40]

The company said at that time that it expects first quarter revenue to decline 15% sequentially.[11] Google's hard-hit shares surged 18% above US$500, a level last seen in February, as the company showed signs of better cost control and earned more revenue abroad than at home for the first time, partly because of the weak dollar.[50]

Google's first quarter net income rose to US$1.31bil, or US$4.12 per diluted share, from US$1bil, or US$3.18 per share a year earlier.[50] AMD lost US$611mil, or US$1.11 per share, in the same period last year[50]

The final tab stopped at $358 million below breakeven, or a $0.59 loss per share.[29] Losses occurred across all business units, with the missing Barcelona an 'increased consumer exposure' being blamed on a loss of $358 million.[13] The consumer electronic segment reported an operating loss of $8 million in the quarter.[40]

Due to the strength of new product mix, gross margins improved keeping operating losses flat at $11 million despite the drop in sales.[40] "We remain committed to achieve operating profitability in the second half of the year, driven by our portfolio of new products and platforms and aggressive restructuring programs," Robert J. Rivet, AMD's CFO, said.[32] We remain committed to achieve operating profitability in the second half of the year, driven by our portfolio of new products and platforms and aggressive restructuring programs.''' He seems to be saying: '''Our new product delivery wasn'''t up to scratch and people didn'''t buy as much of our older stuff as we had hoped, but we'''ve sorted things out now and we'''re cutting ten percent of the workforce so things should get more profitable.'''[3]

". He said the company was encouraged by acceptance of its new and much delayed quad-core server chips and remained confident of hitting operating profit in the second half of the year.[28]

In other positive updates,''Rivet said that the balance sheet is in good enough shape to see the company through the restructuring charges and other losses that are expected to come before the return to operational health. Last year's price wars with Intel (Nasdaq: INTC ) on the processor side and NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA ) in the graphics chip market left some lasting scars on this eternal underdog but did not put the company out of business.[29] Continued restructuring and impairment charges stemming from the assets Intel transferred to Numonyx cost it four cents. After lowering its Q1 projection to 54% last month, the company's all-important gross margin came in at 53.8%, up from 50.1% year-over-year. It's pushed its second-quarter guidance out to somewhere between $9 billion and $9.6 billion, a rise in the mid-point, with its gross margin a point better than Wall Street expected at 56%.[34] The estimate on the Street was for $9.24 billion and Intel's gross margin prediction for the year remains unchanged at 57%, not the 56% widely assumed.[34]

AMD lost $358m ('180m) between January and March, even though sales were up 22% on the same period a year ago. [37] On a per-share basis, AMD lost 59 cents, compared with $1.11 a year earlier.[6]

As an ex-AMDer myself, all you guys are in my thoughts and prayers today. Hope those of you who were affected will land on your feet soon. This is the way of the future.no longer do we work for the same company for years and years.we work for one for a few years until they get what they want out of us and then they get rid of us.letting someone on the other side of the world do the job for 1/2 the cost, and ultimately end up destroying what we worked on so hard to achieve here. That's what AMD gets for building on environmentally sensitive areas. Jordan, let me guess, you own a house over this way.[10] Some 215 of the jobs lost were in Austin, Tex., AMD's largest non-manufacturing site. In addition to the downsizing, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz said the company was "embarking on a significant restructuring of our company," providing no specific details but noting that AMD would "intensely scrutinize" both its core x86 and graphics businesses and its non-core businesses. "We will exit these non-core businesses if they fail to meet the company's strategic goals," Ruiz said.[14] 'As a result, we are embarking on a significant restructuring of our company to address the following: We need to intensely scrutinize all of our businesses in order to ensure that our core x86 and graphics products are on a healthy path to leadership and profitability,' Ruiz added. If those 'non-core' businesses are not profitable, Ruiz said the company will likely jettison those parts of the company. While executives did not point to a specific part of the company, it seems they will begin to examine the company's consumer electronics business, which has underperformed.[4] In the Q&A; session that followed the call, Ruiz refused to give any more detail on exactly which units and products company would be cutting and when, insisting only that the results of the scrutiny would be visible "soon." Ruiz and the rest of his team were similarly reluctant to give analysts any details at all on the company's "asset light" strategy, which they've renamed "asset smart."[23]

As long as that old Ruiz is running things in that company, nothing good will ever happen. I used to like AMD products, and I really hope they can make a come back again, but I'm not optimistic this time.[13] AMD is trying hard to catch up with larger rival Intel Corp. (INTC), which has widened the products gap significantly in recent times.[11]

Even better, the 45-nanometer manufacturing process is on track for "mature yields" and production-level shipments in the fourth quarter. It's about time for AMD to get that baby out the door, especially since Intel has already been enjoying the cost-controlling and low-power benefits of the more advanced process for several quarters now.[29] A decrease in unit shipments dinged AMD. AMD noted that average selling prices were flat from the fourth quarter and year ago quarter.[41]

The good news about AMD's (AMD) first quarter news was that the bad news was not worse.[15] Chipmaker AMD posted its sixth consecutive loss yesterday, for the first quarter of 2008.[28]

Sales of $1.51bn were up from $1.23bn in the first quarter of 2007.[28] Previously, it had expected first quarter revenue to decline in line with seasonality.[11] In the seasonally down second quarter, AMD expects revenue to decrease in line with seasonality.[46] Looking forward, AMD expects revenue to decrease in line with seasonality in the usually weak second quarter.[11] AMD said it expects revenue in the current quarter to decrease in line with seasonality, which CFO Rivet said has historically ranged anywhere from flat to down 10% sequentially in the second quarter.[1]

On Thursday Advanced Micro Devices became the third high-tech powerhouse in Austin to announce layoffs of employees. A.M.D. says it's laying off 420 employees worldwide, 215 of those are from right here in Austin. "It's a necessary thing to do in order for us to become more efficient and to bring our costs more in line with our revenues and decrease our operating expenses" says Travis Bullard, a spokesperson for A.M.D.[51]

The company warned of lower than expected revenue on April 7. AMD is believed to have laid off 3-5% of its staff today. AMD expects its Q2 revenue to decline from Q1 following a seasonal pattern.[13] The company's stock rose jubilantly in after-hours trading up 8% at times and the results were expected to have positive impact on sentiment about the sector, which has been taking it on the chin. NAND revenues were flat as expected since memory pricing has been bedeviling the company lately - causing it to trim its margin prediction and offsetting reported unit growth.[34] On July 20, 2006, AMD reported revenue shy of expectations, and the stock declined 3.8% in after-hours action.[45] On Jan. 17, 2008, the stock gained 4.3% during evening trading after AMD reported a sales miss.[45] On October 7, 2004 AMD reported in line results and the stock eked out a thin 0.2% rise.[45]

Semiconductor stocks wavered Friday, missing the technology sector boost provided by strong Google Inc. results as Advanced Micro Devices Inc. reported a weak quarter.[42]

The semiconductor sector is one to watch in the after-hours following Intel'''s ( INTC ) better than expected earnings and explosive surge after the bell Tuesday. The next headliner in this sector is Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) which is expected to report Q1 results tonight after the close.[45] SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) — Struggling chip maker Advanced Micro Devices says its first-quarter loss narrowed but sales across all business segments were lower than it had expected.[22] The decrease is due to lower-than-expected sales across all business segments, AMD said.[38]

AMD has posted its sixth consecutive quarterly loss, despite a 22 per cent year-on-year increase in sales.[27] The loss met analysts lowered expectations of a 51 cents per share loss, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.[12] Backing out the aqcuisition charge, AMD earned 51 cents a share, matching expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.[2]

Analysts have speculated that AMD might be talking with an outside investor about the possible purchase of a substantial share of the company's two big factories in Germany.[6]

Salaries in the U.S. have risen to the point where it is difficult to justify employing people here in the States vs. overseas when the owners of the company (share holders) are solely interested in shareholder returns measure by payouts and earnings per share. I feel for those that must now find new jobs in this very difficult enviornment.[10] Austin, which had 2,700 AMD workers before the job cuts, is the company's largest nonmanufacturing center. AMD employs about 3,500 workers in Dresden, Germany, where its major factory operations are.[6] The situations sucks, but it is what it is. Although, I hope whoever pushed the case to build the new facility in it's current location was thrown out the door. The people that are applauding hard working Austinites loosing their jobs because AMD built on in the aquifer's recharge zone are simply idiots. It is a shame AMD built above the aquifer, but this decision had nothing to do with the people that were laid off today. The executives, developers, and city of Austin officials that are responsible for AMD building in the aquifer's recharge zone did not lose their job. The people who lost their jobs are hard working Austinites trying to make a living and provide for their families. It is difficult for me to understand how people get enjoyment from knowing this layoff will result in some people loosing their homes, or not being able to pay for their children's education. As an ex AMDer, it is heart breaking to see this happen.[10]

If you want to save $50, AMD's "9850" is a good processor. It has AMD's new bug-free "B3" stepping.[13] We are encouraged by the market acceptance of our Quad-Core AMD Opteron server processors as well as our new chipset and graphics offerings."[41] AMD CFO Robert Rivet promised a "third Tier 1 OEM coming on board" with quad-core Opteron servers in Q2, joining Dell and Hewlett-Packard, which recently unveiled new HP Proliant servers built on the processors.[14]

AMD announced Wednesday that Dell is now offering five servers based on AMD's long-delayed quad-core Opteron processors and that virtualization developer VMware has qualified the quad-core server chips for ESX and ESXi hypervisor deployments.[14]

As previously disclosed, AMD expects to record a restructuring charge in the second quarter of 2008. Troubled AMD recently announced plans to adjust its cost structure by reducing its workforce by approximately 10 percent by the end of the third quarter of 2008.[46]

The latest quarter's results include charges of 8 cents a share for the acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies.[22] The results included acquistion-related charges of 8 cents a share, related to the company''s merger with ATI Technologies.[40]

Shares of the world's largest supplier of chip manufacturing equipment, Applied Materials Inc., edged up 15 cents to $19.32.[42] The chip maker announced plans to build a $3.2 billion chip manufacturing plant in Saratoga County.[26]

The chip maker plans to release a range of new products for PCs and servers that it hopes will help return the company to profitability.[30] AMD is looking to bounce back in the second half of 2008 with a mix of new products for desktops, notebooks and servers.[4]

In graphics business, independent benchmarks continue to show the strong performance and value of AMD Radeon HD3000 series of graphics products.[40] The company has already introduced the 780 Series chipset, the industry's most advanced motherboard GPU and the first product capable of combining the graphics power of integrated motherboard and discrete graphics to deliver a better visual experience.[11]

That'''s good, maybe even great news for the semiconductor sector, and possibly for the entire U.S. economy. Says technology analyst John Barton of Cowen and Company "We expect the solid March quarter results and healthy June guidance should set a positive tone throughout the semi industry providing a significant catalyst to these shares."[35] During the company's first-quarter 2008 earnings call April 18, CEO Hector Ruiz told analysts that the heavy losses the company has endured during the last six quarters will likely lead to a restructuring of the Sunnyvale, Calif., company.[4]

Initial systems are now available from several customers including Dell Inc. (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ). During the quarter, the company demonstrated its first 45nm quad-core processors for servers and desktops.[11] '''First quarter 2008 gross margin was 42 percent compared to 44 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 and 28 percent in the first quarter of 2007.[3] Gross margin in the first quarter was 42 percent, down from 44 percent in the fourth quarter, but up from 28 percent in the year-ago period.[20]

Gross margin for the first quarter was 42%, compared to 28% in the prior year quarter and 44% in the prior quarter.[11]

Typically, first quarter is seasonally weak for the chipmakers when demand for chips and other electronic devices is slow after a strong holiday selling season in the fourth quarter.[11] "Our first quarter results demonstrate a strengthening core business and a solid global market environment," Otellini added.[35]

Management says that AMD should return to profitability in the third quarter, which would be the first profits seen since the halcyon days of October 2006.[29] AMD is favoring a narrowing trend in the near-term, with three narrowing events in the last four quarters; the exception coming in the most recent quarter. Over the long-term, AMD favors a narrowing pattern, either cutting back or reversing its evening trade nine times in the last 15 events, and seeing flat trade between the sessions in another instance.[45] At the time, AMD could not confirm whether the South African office would remain open; however, Srivastava says the company is now in a good position to pursue local opportunities. AMD has consolidated its channel partners and scaled up local relationships with vendors like Sun Microsystems, Acer and HP. Barcelona Srivastava says AMD is optimistic about its global operations.[36] Barcelona, which is considered key to the company's near-term future, has been a trouble spot for the company; several design-glitch delays kept AMD's technology availability behind that of competitor Intel.[32] Chief executive Hector Ruiz said AMD would be revealing plans on how to restructure the company further "in the near future".[37] Essentially, everything that is not part of the company's X86 microprocessor and graphics business may be examined, Ruiz said, for "leadership and profitability". "Absent these, we will exit those businesses," he said.[16] CEO Hector Ruiz says the company will focus on its core x86 processor and graphics business while other parts of the business will come under scrutiny.[4]

On April 19, 2007, the stock was up 0.8% after revenues decline vs a year ago and the company guides for revs in line to up slightly. [45] The company previously said it expected first-quarter revenue to decline in line with seasonality.[38]

Revenue advanced 22 per cent to $1.51-billion from $1.23-billion. [7] Revenue was $1.5 billion, up from $1.23 billion for the year-ago period.[21]

Cash and marketable securities balance at the end of the quarter was $1.753 billion, down $136 million from the prior quarter.[40] The loss dropped from $611 million in Q1 2007 and $1.77 billion in Q4, which included a $1.68 billion write-off due to the decreased value of the ATI acquisition.[13]

AMD pays $22.7 million for utilities in Austin and pays $52.6 million in city, county and school taxes.[38] The stock price falls near the bottom of AMD's 52-week range of $5.31 to $16.19.[32] In terms of stock performance, AMD shares have lost 56.36% in the last 12 months during which Intel shares have gained 3.65%.[11] After Intel fired back with a powerful new lineup, AMD's stock began sliding.[17]

The evening gain followed better-than-expected Q4 results and flat to slightly down sales guidance. The stock maintained its upside on Jan. 19, but buyers scaled back the gains, and AMD closed that day's regular session at 37.13 (up 8.7%).[45] In the U.S., Otellini said, notebooks have become "fashion statements" and are either changed more frequently or people simply have several. He was unwilling to speculate on the reaction of China, India and Indonesia to the coming netbooks but it's obvious he's expecting fireworks. Q1 revenues - and Intel gets 75% of its revenues now from outside the U.S. - were a tad better than the stock market's lowered sales expectations.[34]

The main fly in Intel's soup was the decline in NAND prices, which, when coupled with flat NAND shipments, made for a net operating loss. The NAND price drop also ate into Intel's gross margins, which dropped to 53.5 percent this quarter. [23] AMD posts sixth straight quarterly net loss An AMD Phenom Quad-Core Processor is seen in an undated handout image.[5] The chipmaker's first-quarter net loss was more than double what it was a year ago.[1]

The numbers were well in line with what analysts had anticipated. In a conference call with analysts, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said that the company would continue its transition into the personal computer market, saying "the shipment crossover of desktop PCs to mobile PCs will now happen this year and not next year as we originally anticipated." [35] AMD needs to execute and deliver higher speed and 45nm Barcelonas as promised (not to mention succeed with Phenom, Griffin / Puma, and ATI GPUs). To make matters worse Intel's Nehalem CPUs should release later this year. It's really do or die.[10] Years ago, when Intel CPU's were too expensive to buy, I bought AMD instead.[13]

Optimism didn't last, however, as the firm was plagued by delays and glitches. A slowly deteriorating macroeconomic environment is also expected to take its toll, with Intel reporting flat ASPs and continued price deflation in NAND. Shipments of AMD's Barcelona chip will also be of interest.[48] AMD was a secondary supplier and has retained rights to duplicate elements of Intel's chips. The Associated Press contributed to this article.[2]

There are also large chip companies in Asia which might kick the tires. AMD's other option is to try to auction off its graphics chip operation, ATI. It bought the firm for too much money about two years ago. To sell it, even with a big haircut, might allow the parent to clean up its balance sheet.[15] The memory chip manufacturer announced profits of nearly ''18 million despite a serious drop in the cost of memory cards. It is now believed that the cost per megabyte has dropped by over sixty percent in a year, Sandisk are optimistic that the fall in prices would level out over the next twelve months.[31] Advanced Micro Devices Inc. cut 420 jobs Thursday, including 215 in Austin, in the first stage of a cost-cutting campaign designed to end a long string of losses. The chip maker said last week that it would eliminate 10 percent of its 16,800 jobs worldwide by the end of September.[6] Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has cut 215 jobs in Austin as part of a larger cost-cutting effort. The Sunnyvale chip maker is reducing its work force overall by 10 percent.[38]

AMD also announced plans Thursday to cut 420 jobs companywide, including 215 positions in Austin. [26] Abu Dhabi won't keep bailing out AMD forever. For the sake of many Austinites' jobs and the semiconductor industry in general, we're all pulling for AMD. For those who lost their jobs, my heart goes out to you.[10] We all blame companies moving jobs overseas, but we never blame the low prices of goods we enjoy, stock dividends we receive, etc. because of cheaper labor in developing contries. It all runs a full circle Wall street wants bigger profit, forcing companies to outsource to keep costs low. It is share holders (all of us having stocks) who want more out of our investments.[10]

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were looking for a loss of 51 cents a share.[1] 'Cleary, the exposure we have to notebook share in the consumer market makes us swing a little bit more in terms of seasonality compared to the overall notebook market, and due to that, we have serious opportunity to gain headwind in the back half of the year,' Meyer told analysts.[30] Total chip units in Q1 were lower quarter-over-quarter, as is normal after the holidays, and ASPs remained pretty flat. Otellini said that rather than mobile taking a greater chip share than desktops next year the crossover would happen this year and he is particularly confident of Intel's ability to exploit the situation what with its newfangled Atom chip, with its reportedly happy margin, and good ole Centrino.[34]

Intel was the original supplier of chips to IBM, when that company entered the PC business in the 1980s.[2]

The source of AMD's microprocessor losses was a decline in shipments (average selling prices remained flat), which AMD described as "seasonal." The company also made repeated references throughout the call to the deteriorating macroeconomic climate, as well as to their "significant exposure" in the (now-soft) consumer market. Or, in plain English, they tried to shift the blame for their low numbers onto the recession by citing slow consumer spending. [23] AMD CFO Robert Rivet said in a statement the company is committed to hitting operating profitability in the second half.[41]

"Management is looking to divest the consumer-electronics business as it has a disproportionately higher R&D; expense; higher revenue and margin volatility; and is not core to AMD's business."[32] The lower gross margins, slight increase in effective tax rate, and asset impairment charges conspired to bring Intel's profits down by 12 percent year-over-year, despite the jump in overall revenue.[23]

One need only ask, does AMD have a roadmap that will be successful in the market and competitive with Intel? The answer is most assuredly YES. The idea that AMD will die trying because there will not be enough time to execute is severely flawed because it is not forward-looking, and even if it were, the investors behind the recent AD cash infusion are not likely to let that happen if it is only a matter of having more time; and that is exactly what it is.[19] Analysts say AMD has fallen behind in competition with Santa Clara-based Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC).[38] Competition from Intel, which is larger and richer and has introduced a series of strong products, remains fierce. "Intel is coming at them from all sides with overwhelming firepower," analyst Roger Kay with Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. said last week.[10]

The global company has about 17,000 workers, and in 2007, the company lost about $3.3 billion. [47] The company has until July 2009 to commit to the project and still receive $1.2 billion in state incentives.[26]

In Austin, the company said it has a $331 million annual payroll and makes $110.8 million in local purchases annually.[38]

On April 12, 2006, shares fell 2% in evening trading after the company reported in line and guided for Q2 flat to slightly lower.[45] The company admits to having had a hard time catching up with market share, and says the global lay-offs and restructuring is what any responsible company should do.[36]

The bottom line will be impacted by a 'restructuring charge' the company will assume during the quarter. [13] I may have to ride out the recession." Many at the company's new location off of Southwest Parkway had exit interviews Thursday morning and quickly packed up their things. Now they have to find new jobs.[47] AMD also launched seven new AMD Phenom processors for high-end personal computers.[11] AMD's poor results were also in stark contrast with profits announced by Sandisk, the world's largest maker of memory chips.[37] AMD also announced software updates to enable the world''s first quad-GPU support.[40] I have said this when they announced their 1st loss. Dont know why TGD is such a AMD FAnboy. No matter how many jargaons they use to fool people, they are a sinking ship.[13]

Net income of $643 and $0.85 EPS beat street estimates and pushed the stock up. [44] 'We believe that the lack of availability of quad-core Opteron servers from brand-name servers, in particularly, dealt the chipmaker a blow in the first,' John Spooner, an analyst with Technology Business Research, wrote in an April 17 research note.[30]

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1. AMD Posts Another Big Loss | Semiconductors | AMD DELL HP INTC - TheStreet.com
2. AMD Meets Modest Expectations - Forbes.com
3. AMD posts Q1 net loss, remains optimistic :: HEXUS.channel - The online home of the UK technology channel
4. Amid Losses, AMD Looks to Restructure
5. AMD posts sixth straight quarterly net loss: Scientific American
6. AMD cuts 420 jobs, including 215 in Austin
7. reportonbusiness.com: AMD posts sixth straight quarterly loss
8. PC World - Business Center: AMD Reports Sixth Consecutive Quarterly Loss
9. PCB007 - AMD Posts $1.5B Revenue for 1Q
10. statesman.com
11. AMD Q1 Loss Narrows [AMD] - RTTNews, Today's Top Stories, Global Newswires, ToDay's Top News,Global Business news .
12. AMD Takes 6th Straight Quarterly Loss - International Business Times -
13. TG Daily - Update: AMD loses $358 million in Q1, may sell business units
14. Another Quarter, Another Loss For AMD - Hardware - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
15. 24/7 Wall St.: AMD (AMD): Still In The Woods Without A Guide
16. Update: AMD to Exit Non-Core Businesses - News and Analysis by PC Magazine
17. The Associated Press: AMD posts 1Q loss, meets Wall Street's lowered expectations
18. Ahead of the Bell: Analysts setill see AMD as a "Sell" - Forbes.com
19. AMD (AMD) heads toward oblivion - BloggingStocks
20. AMD posts sixth straight quarterly net loss | Technology | Reuters
21. Advanced Micro 1Q Loss/Share 59 Cents Vs Loss $1.11
22. The Associated Press: AMD narrows 1Q loss, sales rise but co. expected more
23. AMD's first quarter earnings: it's the economy, stupid
24. Intel, IBM Speed Through Economic Slowdown
25. Google's Quarter: What Recession? - Headline Watch
26. AMD reports 1Q loss of $358M - The Business Review (Albany):
27. AMD posts sixth quarterly loss in a row - vnunet.com
28. AMD's Q1 loss comes in as planned | Channel Register
29. Patience, AMD Owners: The Profits Are Coming
30. AMD Hopes New Products Help Propel `08 Comeback
31. Restructuring essential as AMD post another loss
32. AMD posts down Q1, future cloudy - 4/18/2008 - Electronic News
33. AMD sinks deeper into the red | Information Age
34. Virtualization - Intel Pulls It Out; North America Rebounds @ VIRTUALIZATION JOURNAL
35. Chip Sector Looking Healthier After Intel Forecast
36. ITWeb :AMD SA employees safe
37. BBC NEWS | Business | Chip maker AMD still in the red
38. AMD cuts 215 jobs in Austin, 420 overall - East Bay Business Times:
39. AMD plummets in the first quarter - 18 Apr 2008 - Computing
40. Advanced Micro Devices First Quarter Earnings Call - Earnings calls
41. AMD posts loss; sees seasonally down quarter ahead | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
42. Sector Snap: Chip makers waver after weak AMD results - Forbes.com
43. AMD Q1 loss narrows to $358M - East Bay Business Times:
44. Closing bell: Climbing the wall of worry in earnings season - BloggingStocks
45. If History Serves, Advanced Micro Devices Will Overreact After Hours - Seeking Alpha
46. EETimes.com - AMD posts sixth straight quarterly loss
47. KXAN.com - News, Weather, Sports - Austin, TX | AMD cuts hundreds of employees Thursday
48. AMD Earnings Preview: How Much Share Did Intel Grab? (AMD, INTC) - Silicon Alley Insider
49. Free Preview - WSJ.com
50. Quick Read
51. Layoffs hit Austin's high tech industry | News for Austin, Texas | kvue.com | KVUE News Team

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