Intel has recently added eight unannounced desktop Coffee Lake processors to its MDDS (material declaration datasheet) database. Three new chips belong to the Core i3/i5 lineup are targeting mainstream PCs, whereas another five are Pentium Gold and Ce…
Updated Feb 1st!
To mark the start of the annual CES trade show, AMD invited the press in early to sample the latest technologies coming to its portfolio in 2018. What was quite surprising is how much AMD exposed about their plans for 2018, detaili…
This afternoon, AMD announced their earnings for the fourth quarter of 2017. AMD ended the 2017 fiscal year on a high note, with earnings that beat their initial estimates. For the quarter, revenues were up 34% from a year ago to $1.48 billion, and AMD was able to maintain the 35% gross margin they achieved last quarter as well, which is right where they need to be for profitability. Operating income for the quarter was $82 million, up from an operating loss of $3 million a year ago. Net income was $61 million, once again compared to a net loss of $51 million a year ago. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.06.
| AMD Q4 2017 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| Q4’2017 | Q3’2017 | Q4’2016 | |||
| Revenue | $1480M | $1643M | $1106M | ||
| Gross Margin | 35% | 35% | 32% | ||
| Operating Income | +$82M | +$126M | -$3M | ||
| Net Income | +$61M | +$71M | -$51M | ||
| Earnings Per Share | +$0.06 | +$0.07 | -$0.06 | ||
AMD also reports non-GAAP results, which are generally there to show the underlying business performance when they have large write downs, but this quarter AMD’s non-GAAP results closely mirror the GAAP performance, but with no wafer restructuring or other large expenses, the non-GAAP results for this quarter are mainly excluding stock-based compensation, which was $21 million for the quarter. In terms of non-GAAP, operating income was $103 million, net income was $88 million, and earnings per share were $0.08.
For the full year, AMD had revenues of $5.53 billion, which was up 25% from 2016, with an overall gross margin of 34%. Operating income for the year was $204 million, compared to an operating loss of $372 million the year before. Net income for the company for the full year was $43 million, compared to a $497 million loss in 2016.
The bulk of the growth from AMD is unsurprisingly from their Computing and Graphics segment, which has seen somewhat of a perfect storm, with the release of the well-received Ryzen CPU lineup this year, along with a cryptocurrency market which is currently absorbing every GPU it can get its hands on. Thanks to new product releases in both the CPU and GPU from AMD, Computing and Graphics had revenue for the quarter of $958 million, which is up 60% from a year ago. This segment had an operating income of $85 million, up from a net loss of $21 million a year ago.
| AMD Q4 2017 Computing and Graphics | |||||
| Q4’2017 | Q3’2017 | Q4’2016 | |||
| Revenue | $958M | $819M | $600M | ||
| Operating Income | +$85M | +$70M | -$21M | ||
Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom had segment revenue for the quarter of $522 million, which is up 3% from a year ago, which AMD attributes to server revenue. The segment had an operating income of $19 million, down from $47 million a year ago.
| AMD Q4 2017 Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom | |||||
| Q4’2017 | Q3’2017 | Q4’2016 | |||
| Revenue | $522M | $824M | $506M | ||
| Operating Income | $19M | $84M | $47M | ||
All Other had an operating loss of $22 million, which is an improvement from the $29 million loss in Q4 2016.
AMD is expecting revenues of $1.55 billion for Q1 2018, plus or minus $50 million.
2018 looks to be an exciting year for AMD, after their first really successful year in a long time. AMD is expecting to see Ryzen Mobile designs from all the major PC OEMs soon, which should help get it into the hands of more customers (and reviewers!) and the agreement to build a GPU for Intel to integrated on their own CPU is an interesting way to get Radeon into the hands of more people.
Source: AMD Investor Relations
Today Intel announced their quarterly earnings, and 2017 was another record year for the company. Q4 revenue was a record $17.1 billion, and the full year revenue was a record $62.8 billion. For this quarter, Intel’s GAAP earnings took a hit due to a $5.4 billion tax expense thanks to the new tax reforms that were enacted in December, but as a one-time hit, it shouldn’t be a concern going forward. In fact, Intel is forecasting only a 14% tax rate for FY 2018.
In GAAP terms, Intel’s gross margin was 63.1%, which is up 1.4% from a year ago, and their operating income was up 19% to $5.4 billion. However, thanks to a 111.4% effective tax rate due to the one time $5.4 billion tax fee, Intel is actually reporting a GAAP loss for the quarter of $0.7 billion. Earnings per share were therefore down 120% to a loss per share of $0.15.
Due to the tax impact, it’s probably a good thing to look at Non-GAAP earnings as well which will exclude that one-time charge. In terms of Non-GAAP, Intel’s gross margin was 64.8%, which was up 1.7%. Operating income was up 21% to $5.9 billion. Intel’s Non-GAAP tax rate was 21.2%, which is actually higher than the 19.8% they paid last year, and net income was $5.2 billion, up 34% from a year ago. This led to earnings per share being up 37% to $1.08.
For the full year, Intel had $62.8 billion in revenue, with a gross margin of 62.3%. Operating income was up 39% year-over-year to $17.9 billion, although thanks to the tax hit their net income was down 7% to $9.6 billion. In Non-GAAP terms, net income was up 27% to $16.8 billion.
| Intel Q3 2017 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| Q4’2017 | Q3’2017 | Q4’2016 | |||
| Revenue | $17.1B | $16.1B | $16.4B | ||
| Operating Income | $5.4B | $5.1B | $4.5B | ||
| Net Income | -$0.7B | $4.5B | $3.6B | ||
| Gross Margin | 63.1% | 62.3% | 61.7% | ||
| Client Computing Group Revenue | $9.0B | +1.6% | -2.0% | ||
| Data Center Group Revenue | $5.6B | +14.7% | +20.0% | ||
| Internet of Things Revenue | $879M | +3.5% | +21.0% | ||
| Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group | $889M | -0.2% | +9.0% | ||
| Programmable Solutions Group | $568M | +21.1% | +35.0% | ||
Intel is still pivoting business away from the declining PC market, and they have done well to diversify, but still, their PC business is still the biggest piece of the pie. For the quarter, the Client Computing Group had revenues of $9.0 billion, which is down 2% year-over-year, but for the full year of 2017, their CCG was up 3% to $34 billion. It’s not quite dead yet. In an effort to show their diversification, Intel is now quoting their data in “PC-centric” and “Data-centric” and conveniently, Data-centric is all of their business outside of the CCG, but even so, the CCG still accounted for 53% of Intel’s revenue for the quarter.
But, the Data-centric group is certainly growing much quicker than the PC market which is still in a decline. The Data Center Group is by far the largest portion of Intel’s Data-centric efforts, and the DCG had revenues of $5.6 billion for the quarter, which are up 20% year-over-year. With the expansion of the cloud, this likely still has some ways to go before it hits a peak, so it’s likely just a matter of time before they finally surpass their Client Computing Group.
The rest of the Data-centric business was also up for the quarter, with IoT up 20% year-over-year, to $879 million. For the full year the IoT was up 20% and had revenues of $3.2 billion. Non-volatile memory was up 9% for the quarter to $889 million, and for the year it was up 37% to $3.5 billion. Programmable Solutions was up 35% for the quarter to $568 million, and for the full year, was up 14% to $1.9 billion.
Intel still hasn’t shipped anything on 10nm to the point where someone could go buy a chip, although we’re finally getting close, with Intel shipping 10nm to some of their partners. 14nm was delayed, but the delay in getting to 10nm has been longer than likely anyone expected. Intel has still made some bold claims about density, so it should be a good node for them if and when it arrives.
Intel’s forecast for Q1 2018 is for $15.0 billion in revenue, plus or minus $500 million, and despite the rough start to 2018, they are still forecasting another record year, with $65 billion in revenue, plus or minus $1.0 billion.
Source: Intel Investor Relations
In what is becoming an annual tradition, during AMD’s Tech Day here at CES we were given the opportunity to spend some time with Dr. Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO. Throughout 2017, Dr. Su has steered AMD through its return to high performance, offeri…