AMD Reports Q4 FY 2014 And Full Year Results
by Brett Howse on January 20, 2015 8:30 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Financial Results
AMD president and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, announced the company’s Q4 results, with revenue for the quarter coming in at $1.24 billion, with a gross margin of 29%. Earnings per share based on GAAP results was a loss of $0.47 per share. Compared to Q3, revenue dropped 13%, and year-over-year the drop was 22%. Operating income dropped $393 million from Q3 (623% decrease) and is well down from the Q4 2013 value of $135 million with a posted operating loss this quarter of $330 million. Net income fell from $17 million last quarter and $89 million last year to a $364 million loss, which is a pretty substantial change.
AMD Q4 2014 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
Q4'2014 | Q3'2014 | Q4'2013 | |||
Revenue | $1.24B | $1.43B | $1.59B | ||
Operating Income | -$330M | $63M | $135M | ||
Net Income | -$364M | $17M | $89M | ||
Gross Margin | 29% | 35% | 35% | ||
Earnings Per Share | -$0.47 | $0.02 | $0.12 |
AMD had three large reasons for the loss this quarter which hit their GAAP numbers pretty hard. First, they had yet another write down of their SeaMicro and ATI acquisitions, which they attribute to a decline in their stock prices. This cost them $233 million this quarter. Second, they have had to perform a write down for their second generation APU products, which they have listed higher on their balance sheets than they can sell them for now, however they do expect to sell through their inventory. This contributed to a $58 million non-cash charge. Finally, restructuring charges based on layoffs and the departure of their CEO, as well as real estate restructuring charges cost an additional $71 million. As these are all one time charges, AMD has also released Non-GAAP results which exclude these write downs.
On a Non-GAAP basis, operating income was $36 million, which is down 45% from last quarter’s $66 million value, and down year-over-year from the $91 million operating income from Q4 2013. Net income equates to $2 million, down from $20 million last quarter and $45 million last year, and Non-GAAP earnings per share is $0.00, which can also be spelled as zero, which missed analyst’s expectations of $0.01 per share. The core business is getting to the break-even point, and AMD has said that they have had six consecutive quarters of Non-GAAP profitability, but even that is on a razor’s edge with this quarter’s numbers.
AMD Q4 2014 Financial Results (Non-GAAP) | |||||
Q4'2014 | Q3'2014 | Q4'2013 | |||
Revenue | $1.24B | $1.43B | $1.59B | ||
Operating Income | $36M | $66M | $91M | ||
Net Income | $2M | $20M | $45M | ||
Gross Margin | 34% | 35% | 35% | ||
Earnings Per Share | $0.00 | $0.03 | $0.06 |
Full numbers for the year had revenue of $5.51 billion, up from $5.30 billion in 2013, and the GAAP operating loss was $155 million for 2014, down from the $103 million operating income for 2013. GAAP net income for 2014 was down as well, to a $403 million loss, exceeding 2013’s loss of $83 million. Non-GAAP values for 2014 were slightly better, with a $235 million operating income and a small profit of $51 million for the fiscal year. Once again, the core business is breaking even, but the heavy write downs are hurting the bottom line.
Looking at individual business lines, the Computing and Graphics segment had a net revenue for Q4 of $662 million, down 15% from Q3 and down 16% from Q4 2013. Lower desktop processor and GPU sales are the blame over last quarter, and desktop processors and chipset sales are called out as the decrease over last year’s numbers. Operating loss for the segment was $56 million, as compared to $17 million in Q3 and $15 million in Q4 2013. Lower channel sales were partially offset by lower operating expenses. Average selling price actually increased both sequentially and year-over-year for processors and chipsets, but GPU selling price decreased year-over-year. This is a soft spot for AMD, and they are diversifying their business outside of the traditional PC space in an attempt to keep one weak line from hurting the company so much. In 2012, about 90% of AMD’s business was based on the traditional PC industry, and by 2014 it was down to 60%, with the other 40% consisting of professional graphics, semi-custom chips, ARM based server, embedded, and ultra low-power clients. By 2015 they are estimating that 50% of their business will be these new markets.
Looking at the Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom group at AMD, you can see why they are moving that direction. For the full fiscal year, this group contributed $2.374 billion in revenue, and had an operating income of $399 million, both of these are up from 2013 where they managed only $1.577 billion in revenue and $295 million in operating income from this group. Looking at the quarter itself, revenue fell 16% from Q3’s $648 million to $577 million, which AMD attributed to a large run-up of chips for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in Q3, as Microsoft and Sony built up inventory for the holiday season. Operating income for Q4 was $109 million, down from $129 million Q4 2013 and up slightly from the $108 million last quarter.
The “All Other” category had no revenue for the quarter, but took a $383 million operating loss, which results in a 2014 operating loss of $478 million for the year. This is the category that is taking the write downs we have already discussed.
Looking ahead to 2015, AMD is listing 2015 as “profitable” at least as far as Non-GAAP figures. Q1 2015 guidance is for a 15% drop in revenue, plus or minus 3%. Gross margin should be up 5% to 34%.
AMD has seen some pretty serious competition in the PC segment, which is still their largest single contributor. Intel has just released their 14 nm parts, with a new CPU architecture due out later this year with Skylake. AMD does have a new APU on the horizon though with Carrizo, and they had working prototypes at CES. While CPU performance will likely not stun anyone due to the new CPU being still based on the Bulldozer architecture, GPU performance should be very competitive. These will be 15 to 35 watt parts, so as far as TDP they will compete against the just launched Broadwell-U. For lower power, AMD will have the Carrizo-L based on Puma+ CPU cores for the 10-25 watt range. All of this will still be on 28 nm though, which puts AMD at a pretty significant disadvantage for efficiency. The increased GPU power may be enough to sway some customers, since many people find they are not CPU bound anyway. Time will tell, and we look forward to seeing the new chips show up so we can test them out.
Source: AMD Investor Relations
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silverblue - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
It's not exactly helping AMD now though. Forcing weak (though stronger than consoles had previously) CPU cores onto developers thus attempting to force them to utilise as many as possible is an admirable attempt at giving game programming a kick up the behind, but very few people have hex or octa core CPUs, and PC CPU cores are far more powerful than those within the consoles, so why cater for FX users? Besides which, those eight weak cores have eight individual FPUs... and FX8 has four SMT-based FPUs. I don't see an advantage.FlushedBubblyJock - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
AMD has too stop demanding everyone else make them viable, all they get then is a premmie abortion and they're laying their gutted and dead.AMD needs a man, a visionary, a leader, not a gutless coward who is all to quick to whine as a victim.
At least with the 290X I can't think of whiny victimhood associated with it.
Ktracho - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
Where I think AMD might have a chance is in reasonably priced notebook/desktop CPUs with reasonable performance to which you can attach discreet graphics cards, assuming Intel continues going in the direction of doing away with PCIe lanes on all but high-end enthusiast/server-type CPUs. So if Intel cooperates by only making Xeon and Broadwell-like CPUs, AMD's market could be gaming laptops and smaller-than-full-size desktops targeted at gamers, all with (perhaps optional) discreet graphics.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Except that AMD's current CPU design is far too anemic to be used in a gaming machine. the MSI gx60 showed that pretty well, with the same gpu in an intel laptop performing better in every scenario, sometimes more than double the AMD system's speed. AMD hasn't replaced that chip either, since the fx7600p is MIA. They have no hope of being in a gaming laptop anytime soon.5150Joker - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
That's all good in theory but where is AMD supposed to get the fabs?Guspaz - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
They had them. They decided to get rid of them.yannigr2 - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
The fact that they expect better things to start coming only at the 2rd quarter of 2015, means that they have nothing for this one, and probably only the 300 series GPUs sometime in the 2nd quarter.silverblue - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
There's rumours of a new graphics product, but only in March, which wouldn't affect Q1 really.FlushedBubblyJock - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
Probably a tweaked rebrand 90%.To imagine that they have some core breakthrough is insane.
If they did they couldn't write the drivers for it.
They are demoralized.
A string of miracles in rapid succession is all they need.
Core miracle.
Power miracle.
Market miracle.
Driver miracle.
On a shoestring staff and budget.
I see the 290X as their last crowning achievement.
It's fast, but hot and power hungry, and the next won't make it to the top IMO.
It is now too hard - the core is already too big and too hot, and they are too gutted.
ET - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
AMD didn't actually lose that money, it's just a write-down. Regarding consoles, see 4th paragraph from the end.Short of it is, you've got to read what's being written.