AMD Reports 2014 Fourth Quarter Results (And Annual) - Net Loss of $364 million

[dalekphalm]

Ok, but here's what happens when you only look at one company and not involve the other companies it is competing with also in your projected future outcomes. The 380X will come out and will most likely be faster than the 980 probably about 5-10%. Which is great. However, NVIDIA already has GM200 finished. It already has surfaced as a Quadro card, with 50% increase in specs over the 980. Now, all NVIDIA has to do is release another Titan as the fastest GPU to take over that segment of the market. Having the fastest GPU available. Now granted, it might not be for everyone's pockets but it will still be the fastest GPU. And AMD won't have an answer to that card for at least 6-8 months. Of course, that doesn't take care of the people who aren't in that price bracket. So what could NVIDIA possibly do to regain control of that market segment? Release a cut down version of the Titan, that obliterates the 380x and now they regain control of that market segment again. So what does that mean for AMD again? Then you say, well, they will have the 390 and 390X available. Sure, but NVIDIA is just going to then release a version of the card with more cores unlocked. Thus allowing them to overtake the 390 and 390x but be priced way below the Titan. Which puts them happily in direct competition.

 

Then you go onto explain Zen. Zen is not projected until 2016, and all this hurt they are experiencing will only delays roadmaps for longer. As a matter of fact, Zen isn't even on any current AMD road maps that you can find. So what does that say about the project itself? Yes there has been public discussion about it, but from an official standpoint there is none yet. Some even say Zen won't be available until 2017.  By that time, Intel will have released; Broadwell, Skylake, and Cannonlake. Which means by then Intel will be down to 10nm while AMD will most likely only be down to 16nm. There were also Intel documents that indicates 7 nm may reach production for them around 2017, with 5 nm in 2019.

 

Do you see how far behind AMD is? How much catching up they have to do? Even if they do catch up, they will still be behind by the time they catch up. 

 

Trust me, I would love to see AMD succeed and bring back good healthy competition for the industry. But as much as I would like to see them succeed, I'm not going to blind myself from the facts that currently stand. 

 

Yeah they made $51 million in profit, a small profit and as the article exclaims, "Once again, the core business is breaking even, but the heavy write downs are hurting the bottom line."

 

All the facts you've posted are true. The thing is, AMD knew this was coming, and (presumably) so did everyone else.

 

We knew it would be a rocky road to recovery.

 

As for the Titan 2 (or X, or whatever it's called now), we have no idea what the performance of it will be. We can guess, but until I see released benchmarks, we'll just have to wait and see. The 390/390x could wreck it. Or not. I'll reserve my judgement of the AMD 300 series GPU's, the same as I will for the new Titan GPU. I'll wait for actual benchmarks, not "leaked" 3D Mark scores.

[Diederik_Gr]

As long as AMD isn't going bankrupt, we'll be fine. They might be behind in the never ending tech race, but i could definitely see them catching up. The reputation they still have (to me) is that they always catch up, they're just really taking their time.

[mr moose]

@dalekphalm  The thing I don't entirely like about non-gaap is that the things they take out are things they also deem necessary for future survival. And thus should stay in.  If a company needs to spend money restructuring then in my mind that is no different from spending Money on R+D.  I don't mind reading the non-gaap reports for interests sakes and to see how the a company might want to present itself for future growth, however I always keep in the back of my mind that non-gaap reports are marketing campaigns for investors.

[Trik'Stari]

I kind of hope AMD brings something amazing to the table in the next 2 or 3 years, I kind of want to switch away from Intel since they're supporting/working with the feminazi's

 

Yeah, a bad reason to switch I know, but I care that my money might end up supporting something I stand against.

[dalekphalm]

@dalekphalm  The thing I don't entirely like about non-gaap is that the things they take out are things they also deem necessary for future survival. And thus should stay in.  If a company needs to spend money restructuring then in my mind that is no different from spending Money on R+D.  I don't mind reading the non-gaap reports for interests sakes and to see how the a company might want to present itself for future growth, however I always keep in the back of my mind that non-gaap reports are marketing campaigns for investors.

Oh Definitely. Anyone should be looking at BOTH figures, as the truth lies somewhere in between. But I'm personally not worried for AMD. Their new CEO seems like she knows what she is doing.

[dalekphalm]

I kind of hope AMD brings something amazing to the table in the next 2 or 3 years, I kind of want to switch away from Intel since they're supporting/working with the feminazi's

 

Yeah, a bad reason to switch I know, but I care that my money might end up supporting something I stand against.

You should be getting your wish in 1-1.5 years. AMD Zen is supposed to be due out in 2016. Who knows if it will hold up to the hype, but I think 2016 will be a very exciting year for high-end CPU's.

[mr moose]

I kind of hope AMD brings something amazing to the table in the next 2 or 3 years, I kind of want to switch away from Intel since they're supporting/working with the feminazi's

 

Yeah, a bad reason to switch I know, but I care that my money might end up supporting something I stand against.

 

Also I am seriously hoping for something amazing too,  It has been too long since something came form AMD that you didn't have to think about to come to the conclusion it was good.   E.G When intel releases a new i7 you can assume it will be faster or use less power. However  when AMD release zen, majority are going to look at graphs before they assume anything. 

[BiG StroOnZ]

All the facts you've posted are true. The thing is, AMD knew this was coming, and (presumably) so did everyone else.

 

We knew it would be a rocky road to recovery.

 

As for the Titan 2 (or X, or whatever it's called now), we have no idea what the performance of it will be. We can guess, but until I see released benchmarks, we'll just have to wait and see. The 390/390x could wreck it. Or not. I'll reserve my judgement of the AMD 300 series GPU's, the same as I will for the new Titan GPU. I'll wait for actual benchmarks, not "leaked" 3D Mark scores.

 

I see the only hope for them is doing something completely risky and thinking outside of the box. Like watercooling all their applicable (top tier cards) Single-GPU cards from the factory. 

 

As far as leaks go, just as many fakes there are out there there are completely legitimate and accurate leaks too. Chiphell for instance had on the money leaks of the GTX 980 and 970 two months before release. If you find leaks, and they usually turn out to be fakes. All it means is that the card that is supposedly being leaked is not being released nearly as soon as you thought. Which means real leaks actually surface closer to the release date. So if they are fakes, then don't expect anything soon. Also, that guy that posted that fake leak on Chiphell (that got every other forum on the internet talking about it after) was banned and the thread was also deleted. 

[mr moose]

Oh Definitely. Anyone should be looking at BOTH figures, as the truth lies somewhere in between. But I'm personally not worried for AMD. Their new CEO seems like she knows what she is doing.

 

I don't know whether to be worried or not, part of me says they'll be fine (but it's not founded on any real world knowledge) the other part of me looks at how unstable their market value has been (esp. compared to other companies in similar tech industries) and I can't help but wonder if spending $300M restructuring will actually make the difference it should. If it doesn't then the non-gaap report is just a report that is missing large loses.

[Sammael]

I'm sure that most people saw this coming.  Like Dietrichw mentioned, AMD hasn't released any major new products in over a year.  If everything is just a rehash of old products, myself and obviously the populous at large won't be buying.  At the same time, Nvidia and Intel have been releasing new products all year long.  The 300 series of cards need to be a huge jump in performance, 30-50% improvement over the 200 series, for them to really make a dent in Nvidia's share of the market.  In addition to that, AMD needs to release new powerful 6-8 core CPU's with performance that at least matches Intel's newest line of chips.  That is a lot to ask from AMD, but I have faith that they will be able to pull themselves out of this hole.

 

 

AMD has to be much better than nvidia in the gpu space to win converts.  Even when amd released the r9 290 that essentially matched the 780 for a hundred dollars less, many people still bought 780s.  It was the noise, it was the heat, it was the drivers, and when the third party cards came out, the mining kicked in and inflated the amd card prices and even more nvidia fanboys had excuses to bypass amd.  They talk about superior software features.  This is why AMD can't just be as good as nvidia, they have to either beat them outright at a cheaper cost, or vastly undercut them.  And even then, nvidia will just release a ridiculously expensive TI/titan variant of their gpus and the fanboys will drop more and more cash.  That is why nvidias gpu margins are so much larger than amds, nvidia has more fools to sell to.  Nice demo.

 

 

All future APUs need the ability to talk directly to amd gpus for a sort of default state gpu boost over intel.  With the rise of dx12 for higher end games, cpu performance will be more level between amd and intel.  But amd needs to radically beef up 2 areas against intel.  They need more ipc, and they need better efficiency.  Battery life is a major knock against amd in the laptop space.  I hope carizzo goes a long way in addressing this.

[Fred Castellum]

Interesting all of you fretting over this, come on the loss includes a goodwill write down.

Good to see cash and cash equivalents increase and a hold on total debt.

I can see why the CMO is gone though.

a business reporting a quarterly loss generally isn't a bad thing. In the past quarter AMD have been hiring a lot of new people, and shifting resources around.

 

In fact, this could be a sign that AMD are preparing new products for launch later this year. It takes a massive financial investment upfront to prepare a new product for launch, before they can start making any money back. Graphic cards and processors don't magically appear, they have to be made, and that costs a lot of money up front (hundreds of millions potentially) to produce enough for a world wide launch.

Good analysis, Quarterly Loss doesn't mean it's all bad news. AMD isn't going anywhere in the next 2 years, they've got a decent foothold financially. 

 

So glad I didn't buy stocks when they were cheap but things looked on the rise.   This news make me sad because I hate seeing companies struggle like this, it usually results in everyday workers having to find new jobs.

AMD is a really good flipper right now to be honest, volatility is good for high cap traders. 

[mr moose]

 

AMD is a really good flipper right now to be honest, volatility is good for high cap traders. 

 

That's not me, I am a long term investor.

[Opcode]

All the facts you've posted are true. The thing is, AMD knew this was coming, and (presumably) so did everyone else.

 

We knew it would be a rocky road to recovery.

 

As for the Titan 2 (or X, or whatever it's called now), we have no idea what the performance of it will be. We can guess, but until I see released benchmarks, we'll just have to wait and see. The 390/390x could wreck it. Or not. I'll reserve my judgement of the AMD 300 series GPU's, the same as I will for the new Titan GPU. I'll wait for actual benchmarks, not "leaked" 3D Mark scores.

With the way numbers are panning out it's looking like the TITAN X and the R9 390X will be hand in hand with each other. Tho AMD may have the upper hand with the TITAN X potentially costing $1,300.

[dalekphalm]

With the way numbers are panning out it's looking like the TITAN X and the R9 390X will be hand in hand with each other. Tho AMD may have the upper hand with the TITAN X potentially costing $1,300.

Yeah when it was "leaked" that the Titan 2 will cost $1300, well I think that gave AMD a lot of wriggle room. The 390X MIGHT be priced as high as $600, but I imagine it'll be closer to $500 or less. 'Course, if it's so far ahead of everything else (including Titan 2), then they might try and price it higher, but we really just don't know yet.

[Thony]

this makes me so happy.

Your lack of knowledge makes me happy.