AMD misses; shares sink
The chipmaker says sales rose 53 percent but came in below expectations; stock falls 4 percent after hours.
By Jessica Seid, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Advanced Micro Devices said Thursday sales jumped 53 percent in the latest quarter but fell short of sales targets owing to weakening PC demand and ongoing price wars with Intel.

Shares of AMD (Charts) fell nearly 4 percent in after-hours trading.

TECHNOLOGY

The No. 2 chipmaker behind Intel (Charts) reported earnings of 18 cents a share for its fiscal second quarter ended July 2, up from three cents a year earlier. Analysts had been looking for profits of 22 cents a share, according to a survey by Thomson First Call.

Net income rose to $89 million from $11 million.

Sales slipped to $1.22 billion from $1.26 billion a year ago, below forecasts of $1.25 billion.

"While we achieved 53 percent year-over-year sales growth and recorded our twelfth consecutive quarter of greater than 20 percent year-over-year microprocessor sales growth, we are dissatisfied by not reaching our second quarter sales target," Robert Rivet, AMD's chief financial officer, said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the computer processor maker warned that second-quarter sales would fall short of expectations because of competition from industry leader Intel, which has been aggressively cutting prices to clear inventories and spur sales.

"One reason AMD suffered this quarter had to do with a specific strategy that Intel targeted," said Samir Bhavnani, director of research for technology research firm Current Analysis. "Intel was really aggressive with pricing," and that, in turn, chipped away at AMD's market share.

After the warning, Banc of America Securities, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Prudential Securities all cut their target prices for AMD's stock.

The stock had slumped 30 percent so far this year, prior to Thursday's activity, after rising almost 40 percent last year.

Guidance goals

Looking forward, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said it expects demand to be seasonally strong in the second half of the year and third-quarter sales to increase sequentially.

"We feel very positive about the second half of the year," said AMD's CEO Hector de J. Ruiz on a conference call with analysts.

According to Thomson First Call, analysts expect that sales in the current quarter will climb to $1.34 billion and earnings will increase to 29 cents a share.

On Wednesday, Intel reported that profits tumbled 57 percent in the second quarter and gave sales guidance for the current quarter that was below Wall Street forecasts.

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Related: The AMD-Intel battle gets hotter.

Plus: Intel earnings tumble, stock slidesTop of page

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.