Should AMD Shareholders Be Worried? | The Motley Fool

I listened to this and not sure if he is correct. I think that AMD has had weak cpu sales in the desktop segment for a while now and doing very well in the other segments. He doesn’t speak to that. Has any one heard of this person? Is he an AMD expert? Is he more of an Intel guy? When we look to the next few quarters, it’s all a guess and he is guessing bad numbers for AMD just because of the desktop segment is what I am getting. Someone enlighten me please…doc

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I know nothing about the guy, or his track record when it comes to making predictions about AMD, but I can say that, yes, I am worried! But at least AMD hasn’t pre-warned about missing estimates, so that’s something. But of course, Intel didn’t pre-warn either.

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I didn’t get a sense that he was predicting that AMD’s share price would take a hit, just that Intel’s poor results in the PC segment suggest that AMD will also show poor results in the PC segment – which I don’t see any reason to think is surprising and not priced in.

By the disclaimer at the bottom, he owns Intel and not AMD. I don’t think that it’s nefarious, but it indicates where his conviction lies. But in any case, it seemed even-handed to me.

Personally, I hope the stock gets decimated by short-term concerns over PC sales, because I’ll have more money to invest on Wednesday.

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The other thing I wonder about is how much Apple going to their own cpu’s will hurt AMD ie how much of AMD business was Apple…doc

Should AMD share holders be worried? No

It is a rough PC market however, AMD is winning the battle which is why Intel put up such a terrible outlook. As Intel has always done, they blamed the economy and the market. This has a splash effect on AMD and Nividia in the analysis given by analysts (like the one in the video).

Looking closer at AMD we see strong CPU and GPU sales in a consumer market place with shrinking sales. We also see AMD’s server market sales strong and growing. I expect AMD PC and GPU sales to be down but no where near as sharply down as Intel’s. Meanwhile AMD’s server sales will increase. The net result should be slightly up overall.

What people are not very aware of is that Intel stuffed their distribution channels with chips at the launch of Raptor Lake to brag about their shipping numbers. Unfortunately the gamble didn’t work as sales did not hit Intel’s expectations and now they are facing distributor supply surpluses in addition to a declining market. This is why Intel’s Client Computing is down 36% while analysts are saying the entire market is only down somewhere between 19% - 25%.

For more information on what I am saying above see the Moore’s law video from my previous post

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I watched that one and I also watched the one about Meteor Lake. Thanks so much…doc

AMD clients took a big hit in Q3, dropping to just $1B. From Q3 to Q4 Intel clients dropped about 17%, and Intel predicts Q1 revenue drops another 20% or so from Q4 levels.
If client market share remains about constant AMD will report around $830M revenue for clients. Intel claims to have increased ASP’s and increased client market share in Q4, but that is something we will discover Tuesday.

There is little doubt AMD will have another great quarter for their server business, which should more than offset the bloodbath in clients. Intel chose not to give full year 2023 guidance; It will be a big feather for AMD if they choose to make full year guidance.
Alan

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“Server first.” As true today as it was back then. Although I guess it’s more “datacenter first” since the offerings are now beyond the individual box.

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AMD is crushing Intel, again. Gelsinger needs some more time to turn that whale around.

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“Server first.” As true today as it was back then. Although I guess it’s more “datacenter first” since the offerings are now beyond the individual box.

Corporations and individuals have no reason to upgrade desktop boxes. (I say this having just bought a 7900X and built a system around it. Why 7900X and not 7900? Amazon had a price on the 7900X, which was significantly lower than the 7900 at Amazon or Newegg.)

What about servers? I converted the “old” 5900X box into a server running Fedora on top of VMware. Corporations running VMware, which should soon be everyone other than Microsoft, will be able to upgrade by adding servers instead of replacing them. Once upon a time, upgrading could save the cost of a new system in power costs in a year or two. No longer. I suspect that AMD, with their non-X CPUs, is trying to recapture some of this. The same CPUs rebranded to deliver 90% of the performance with a TDP of 65 watts instead of 170 watts. (7900 vs. 7900X) So why am I happy with the 7900X? Even in games, I am not approaching the 7900X TDP. (YMMV) So power, and heating my apartment, is not really an issue.

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I got stuck in the bad weather here in TX yesterday and didn’t get around to looking over the quarterly report. I was encouraged today as I looked over the report especially after seeing Intels data. This morning AMD is popping up over the $81 range right now as I type…doc

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Interesting. On a tangentially related note, the hyperscalers and big properties like Facebook are announcing progressively longer lifetimes for their existing server hardware…

  • Google is now at 6 years
  • Facebook/Meta is at 5 years
  • Amazon is at 5 years

Increasing the useful life of servers is becoming the norm not only for cloud service providers (cloud SPs) but also for data center operators. Omdia’s annual surveys of North American enterprises show an upward trend in the average number of years a server is used, with the 2022 results noting that a server’s useful life at enterprises is now 5.4 years.

So what’s behind this rise? It’s a combination of factors, according to Vladimir Galabov, head of cloud and data center research practice at Omdia. “The COVID-19 pandemic impacted companies’ revenue streams and resulted in a significant pull-back in enterprise IT spending. Enterprises either delayed server refresh or opted to migrate workloads to the cloud to reduce capex and boost their bottom line,” he wrote in the survey report. Additionally, “strong end-user demand amidst a global semiconductor shortage compelled cloud SPs to revisit operational practices.”

The useful life of servers may continue to go up, exceeding five years. “We see an appetite for using servers for six and even seven years at the enterprise if servicing and support can be arranged,” Galabov wrote. “We believe that most end users will not use servers for longer than seven years.”

Extending server life could also lower costs. “Data centers will find out that sweating their system assets [for] a couple of extra years will literally be no sweat, at least in terms of hardware durability,” said Corey Donovan, president of Alta Technologies, an enterprise IT hardware distributor. He recommends focusing on component upgrades to fill the years-long gap on hardware refreshes while also enabling clients’ extension plans.

This was interesting when considering the intel earnings report. I remember when Intel had over 90% of the cpu market.

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I remember when they had over 90% of the server market, which is the one I care about.
I also remember when we used to watch PriceWatch and try to guess what the ASPs on Athlons were, and when they would drop and drop and drop…

Margins, margins, margins.

I been here too long.

It’s crazy how long some of us have been here on the AMD board. Remember Cor and his semiconductor board. Its been a long trek.

AMD Anticipates Long Term Market Share Gains In Client Computing And Data Center: Analyst | Markets Insider (businessinsider.com)

I can’t find the article but AMD popped up in the article about the hedge funds having to reveal the stocks they bought and sold. One of them was accumulating AMD…doc

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