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Advanced Micro Devices reported that its revenue and earnings for the second quarter ended June 30 exceeded expectations, with revenue growing 70% to $6.55 billion on a GAAP basis.
Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $1.707 billion, or $1.05 per share, exceeding expectations of $1.05 per share on revenue of $6.5 billion on a non-GAAP basis. Shares of AMD are down 3.7% to $95.55 per share in after-hours trading.
The Santa Clara, California-based company continues to take advantage of its highly competitive Zen and Zen 2 processor architectures, which can generate 50% or more better performance per clock cycle than the previous generation. Thanks to this architecture, AMD outperformed Intel in performance for the first time in a decade, and it helped the perennial No. 2 PC chipmaker become a fast-growing competitor against Intel.
The results were better than what competitor Intel reported. Over the past few years, Intel has also stumbled on both the chip design and manufacturing side, losing its technological edge to rivals like TSMC, which makes both processors and graphics chips for AMD. As a result, AMD has made historic market share gains over the past three years.
Interestingly, AMD made these gains amid a historic chip shortage due to the supply whipsaw of the pandemic and unprecedented demand for electronic goods.
AMD had quarterly revenue of $6.55 billion, a non-GAAP gross margin of 54% and a non-GAAP operating margin of 30%. On a GAAP basis, sales were $6.55 billion, up 70%.
“We achieved our eighth straight quarter of record revenue based on our strong execution and expanded product portfolio,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a statement. “Each of our segments grew significantly year-over-year, led by higher sales of our data center and embedded products. We see continued growth in the second half of the year, highlighted by our next-generation 5nm product shipments and supported by our diversified business model.”
Intel, meanwhile, has doubled its manufacturing investments to stay competitive and take advantage of the chip boom and supply shortage.
Analysts expected AMD to report EPS of $1.03 on revenue of $6.53 billion for the second quarter ended June 30. For the third quarter ended September 30, analysts expect AMD to report EPS of $1.09 on revenue of $6.82 billion.
AMD said data center revenue was $1.5 billion, up 83% from a year earlier based on strong sales of Epyc server processors. Operating income was $472 million, compared to $204 million a year ago, driven by higher revenues and partially offset by higher operating expenses.
In an analyst call, Su said demand for Epyc processors was strong in the quarter with growth among cloud and enterprise customers. In the cloud, more than 60 new instances powered by third-generation Epyc processors were launched in the quarter by AWS, Baidu, Google, Microsoft Azure and Oracle.
Customer segment revenue was $2.2 billion, up 25% from a year ago, driven by sales of Ryzen mobile processors. The average selling prices of the client processor went up thanks to Ryzen mobile. Operating income was $676 million, up from $538 million a year ago. Su said AMD believes it has achieved client processor revenue for the ninth straight quarter, led by Ryzen Mobile.
Gaming segment revenue was $1.7 billion, driven by higher sales of semi-custom products, such as chips for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S game consoles. Operating income was $187 million, compared to $175 million a year earlier. This was partially offset by lower gaming graphics revenue. AMD said it is on track to ship its 5nm Ryzen 7000 desktop processors and AM5 later this quarter. AMD expects gaming graphics to be lower in the third quarter, but it still plans to launch its high-end RDNA 3 GPUs later this year.
Su said AMD made progress in its data center GPU footprint in the quarter, culminating in the AMD-based Frontier supercomputer reaching the No. 1 spot on the list of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
Embedded segment revenue was $1.3 billion, up 2.228% from a year ago due to the inclusion of the Xilinx acquisition. Operating income was $641 million, up from $6 million a year ago. All other operating losses were $1.5 billion, compared to $92 million a year ago due to amortization of intangible assets related to the Xilinx acquisition. The company said it saw strong growth in field programmable gate array and networking products with cloud and financial customers.
AMD said it is working on its Zen 4 and Zen 5 core architectures (coming in 2024).
Looking ahead, AMD expects revenue to reach $6.7 billion in the third quarter of 2022, plus or minus $200 million, up 55% from a year ago thanks to growth in the data center and embedded segments.
For the full year, AMD estimates revenue will be $26.3 billion, up 60% from a year earlier, and a 54% gross margin. Su said that the customer pull of the 5nm Genoa server CPU is very strong.
“Our work over the past few years has placed AMD on a significant growth trajectory,” said Su. “AMD has never been stronger and the markets for our products have never been more large or diverse.”
Despite a difficult macroeconomic environment, Su said the company is seeing continued growth in the second half of the year, led by the arrival of next-generation 5nm products.
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