Ryzen, Epyc, and Vega help AMD record first operating profit in three years

[midian182]

Thanks to its Lazarus-like recovery in recent times, AMD has reported its first operating profit in three years. But while Ryzen, Vega, and Epyc helped it beat Wall Street's Q3 2017 estimates, the company’s shares were down 11 percent in after-hours trading based on warnings for the current quarter.

For the third quarter of 2017, AMD posted non-GAAP earnings of 10 cents per share on revenue of $1.64 billion, marking a 26 percent year-over-year increase and a 36 percent jump over the previous quarter. Analysts had been expecting 8 cents per share on revenue of $1.51 billion.

"Strong customer adoption of our new high-performance products drove significant revenue growth and improved financial results from a year ago," said AMD chief executive Lisa Su. "Our third quarter new product introductions and financial execution mark another important milestone as we establish AMD as a premier growth company in the technology industry."

The semiconductor company’s computing and graphics segment saw a huge YoY improvement. Thanks to sales of the popular Ryzen processors and its Radeon GPUs, operating income was $70 million, compared to a $66 million loss posted one year ago. The firm pointed to Threadripper, Ryzen 3, and Radeon RX Vega as highlights from Q3 2017.

AMD’s GPUs are proving especially popular with Bitcoin miners; a fact that has no doubt helped boost sales. Exactly how many cards were bought specifically for the purpose of mining is difficult to gauge. “The market is hard to size because it goes through some of the same channels as games,” Su said.

The launch of Ryzen finally saw AMD offering Intel some competition in the high-end CPU market once again. You can see how the chips stack up against Intel’s eighth-generation Core series in our gaming benchmarks feature.

While AMD will be pleased with the results, shares fell on warnings that revenue for the current quarter will be down 15 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, from the previous third quarter.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/71570-ryzen-epyc-vega-help-amd-record-first-operating.html

 

[Squid Surprise]

A promising result - but they still have a LONG way to go before they can be deemed "safe". Intel is already hitting back with their 8000 series CPUs and they aren't really doing that much damage to Nvidia at all on the GPU side... 2018 might make or break them...

 

[wiyosaya]

A promising result - but they still have a LONG way to go before they can be deemed "safe". Intel is already hitting back with their 8000 series CPUs and they aren't really doing that much damage to Nvidia at all on the GPU side... 2018 might make or break them...

There has been similar comments made about AMD since Bulldozer, and yet AMD managed to eek out an existence. I highly doubt that any one year might make or break them. I get that their GPUs are not well regarded at this point, and Intel still has a few tricks up its sleeve, but in some segments of the CPU market at least, AMD is still a value buy. The biggest thing that AMD brings right now is competition. Innovation and improvement will not happen overnight. Assuming AMD comes through with what is on their roadmap and it performs well enough, they just might keep Intel at bay. Right now, Intel's CPUs are still not that much better than the previous generation, yet they require, in most places, a whole new build to use.

I would say that AMD has done fantastic this year, all things considered, and I expect that they will be giving Intel a run for the money. Intel has had a tendency in recent years to run on arrogance, and as I see it, this is not the way to run a company, much less to innovate. Unless Intel gets back to innovation instead of arrogance, I doubt that AMD has much to worry about, and if Intel does innovate, maybe even then AMD will not have much to worry about.

 

[Puiu]

It's too early to tell how AMD will do. The server market is going to be huge for AMD if Epyc turns out to be successful in the long run. Any money they earn is good because they can reinvest it into R&D, something which both Intel and Nvidia destroy AMD in terms of value.

 

[Reehahs]

I would still buy AMD stock since Ryzen is so much better then Bulldozer that it actually forced Intel to be competitive with Coffee Lake. AMD needs to do the same of the GPU side to force Nvidia's hand.

 

[Lionvibez]

I would still buy AMD stock since Ryzen is so much better then Bulldozer that it actually forced Intel to be competitive with Coffee Lake. AMD needs to do the same of the GPU side to force Nvidia's hand.

I would say it has force intel to up the core counts.

skylake and anything newer still has superior IPC to Ryzen.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Vega is pants. Imagine how much more they would have made if they had a good high end GPU the past 12 months.

 

[Reehahs]

I would say it has force intel to up the core counts.

skylake and anything newer still has superior IPC to Ryzen.

Core count thing definitely had more impact on performance per chip as HT can only do so much.

I am not too sure about Intel's IPC being superior based on clock speed and energy efficiency. Clock for clock AMD needs less GHz to match Intel's performance. Intel's chip can be clocked to 5 GHz but efficiency goes out of the Window. What do you think?

 

[Puiu]

Vega is pants. Imagine how much more they would have made if they had a good high end GPU the past 12 months.

Even if Vega failed on the mainstream gaming market, it's still huge in the server and pro market and we both know that was AMD's aim from the start with this architecture.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Even if Vega failed on the mainstream gaming market, it's still huge in the server and pro market and we both know that was AMD's aim from the start with this architecture.

Huge? I think that's a bit strong. Competitive is about the only word I would use, and probably not for very long