AMD Reports Q4 2015 Results And FY 2015 Earnings
by Brett Howse on January 19, 2016 5:10 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- GPUs
- Financial Results
Today AMD released their quarterly earnings for Q4 of Fiscal Year 2015. AMD continues to struggle financially, and for Q4 they had revenues of $958 million, down 10% from last quarter and down 23% since a year ago. Gross margin for the quarter did increase to 30% after last quarter’s $65 million inventory write-down, and for the full year gross margin was 27%, impacted heavily by the write-down last quarter. For Q4, AMD had an operating loss of $49 million, and a net loss of $102 million, or $0.13 per share. For the full year, the operating loss was $481 million and the net loss was $660 million, or $0.84 per share.
| AMD Q3 2015 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| Q4'2015 | Q3'2015 | Q4'2014 | |||
| Revenue | $958M | $1.06B | $1.24B | ||
| Gross Margin | 30% | 23% | 29% | ||
| Operating Income | -$49M | -$158M | -$330M | ||
| Net Income | -$102M | -$197M | -$364M | ||
| Earnings Per Share | -$0.13 | -$0.25 | -$0.47 | ||
On a non-GAAP basis, AMD reports an operating loss for the quarter of $39 million, and a net loss of $79 million. For the full year 2015, the operating loss of $253 million, down from a non-GAAP operating income of $316 million in 2014. This amounts to a per share loss of $0.53 using non-GAAP numbers.
| AMD Q4 2015 Financial Results (Non-GAAP) | |||||
| Q4'2015 | Q3'2015 | Q4'2014 | |||
| Revenue | $958M | $1.06B | $1.24B | ||
| Gross Margin | 30% | 23% | 34% | ||
| Operating Income | -$39M | -$97M | $52M | ||
| Net Income | -$79M | -$136M | $18M | ||
| Earnings Per Share | -$0.10 | -$0.17 | $0.02 | ||
Looking at the individual segments, the Computing and Graphics segment had revenue of $470 million for the quarter, up 11% since last quarter but down 29% year-over-year. AMD had more notebook processor sales compared to last quarter, but lower client processor sales compared to last year. This segment had an operating loss of $99 million, compared to $181 million last quarter and $56 million last year. The inventory write-down last quarter was the main reason for the improvement this quarter, and lower sales caused the year-over-year drop. One good nugget for AMD is that average selling price (ASP) increase sequentially for processors, although it is down year-over-year, but GPU ASP increased both sequentially and year-over-year.
| AMD Q4 2015 Computing and Graphics | |||||
| Q4'2015 | Q3'2015 | Q4'2014 | |||
| Revenue | $470M | $424M | $662M | ||
| Operating Income | -$99M | -$181M | -$56M | ||
The Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom segment had revenue of $488 million, down 23% from last quarter and 15% year-over-year. Operating income was $59 million, down from $84 million last quarter and $109 million last year. AMD attributes the seasonally lower sales of semi-custom SoCs as the reason for the drop from last quarter, and the year-over-year drop is due to lower game console royalties, and lower server and embedded sales.
| AMD Q4 2015 Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom | |||||
| Q4'2015 | Q3'2015 | Q4'2014 | |||
| Revenue | $488M | $637M | $577M | ||
| Operating Income | $59M | $84M | $109M | ||
The All Other segment had an operating loss of $9 million, an improvement over the $61 million loss last quarter, and a big improvement over the $383 million operating loss in Q4 2014. AMD has made some restructuring charges which affected them last quarter, and the year-over-year improvement was “primarily due to the absence of a goodwill impairment charge, lower restructuring and other special charges, net and a Q4 2014 lower of cost or market inventory adjustment.”
With a less than amazing 2015, for 2016 AMD is resting a lot of hope on their new 4th generation GCN GPU, which they are calling Polaris. On the CPU side, they hope to execute their new Zen platform with a 40% increase in Instructions Per Clock. With AMD getting out of the fab business, they have now been relying on others to move forward on the process side, and we are finally seeing fabs other than Intel now producing FinFET based designs. Clearly AMD has a lot of work to do to not only launch the products, but execute sales of them as well. VR could also be an area where AMD could find some growth, since the requirements for VR will likely drive some GPU sales over the next 12 months.
Source: AMD Investor Relations
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ddriver - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
All they need to match Intel's single threaded performance is to make a chip with comparable throughput. AMD have historically had process disadvantage, forcing them to skimp on the transistors. In the pentium 4 days they had arch advantage which mitigated that, but today intel has good arch.Alexvrb - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
When talking about HPC APUs, "scale-up graphics performance" could also mean crossfire/shared compute opportunities with multiple APUs on the same board.vladx - Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - link
"Nintendo goes with a 4K capable GPU on finFET and maybe includes some VR glasses with a 500$ console"Ha, that will never happen.
jjj - Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - link
It is doable though, the easiest way to go and would give them a big advantage over the others. VR glasses are just a screen and not much else so cost wise it is very doable- small screens with no touch layer and cover glass are cheap no matter what lies some might be telling the public. Also do remember hat in consoles folks don't aim to make money with the hardware and that Nintendo was the first one do push gesture based controller.ofc not saying the glasses would be 4k since you need to run those at high FPS but they don't need 4k glasses now.
frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - link
1) Nintendo makes money with their HW. Sega and Sony were the first to push for "Lose money on HW, make it up on SW".2) Nintendo has never been about overpowered specs and super impressive graphics. I doubt this will change now.
3) VR requires both hi-res and hi refresh. This is part of the problems faced by Oculus/HTC. There is no cheap VR screen today.
Conclusion: I really doubt Nintendo will even aim for your dream.
Kjella - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
While we're nitpicking all the table headings say Q3 2015, not Q4 2015.ddarko - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
"AMD attributes the seasonally lower sales of semi-custom SoCs as the reason for the drop from last quarter, and the year-over-year drop is due to lower game console royalties, and lower server and embedded sales."I'm mystified - how did AMD take in less console royalties even as console sales boomed in 2015?
eanazag - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
Sony and MS would buy those CPUs the quarter before to have systems built Christmas and sell hard. We can likely expect a small boost in the semi-custom business in 1Q 2016. Manufacturing time for those consoles would dictate you want them built in the end of the summer to be ready and sitting on shelves in November.ddarko - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
Seasonal buying patterns may account the drop in revenue in Q4 2015 versus Q3 2015 but it doesn't explain why Q4 2015 revenue ($488 million) was also lower than Q4 2014 ($577 million). The year-ago comparison largely takes the seasonal fluctuations out of the picture. I am still scratching my head how semi-custom and console revenue in the fourth quarter of 2015 ended up 15% lower than the fourth quarter of 2014.jjj - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
That's on console royalties (older gen consoles that have declining sales) ,server and embedded.Server must have been some 100 million a year ago and likely dropped a lot since. Plus maybe a bit of a shift in semi-custom timing for orders. It does seem like too much and the funnier part is that revenue outlook for Q1 is down 14% , with PC dropping less than that.
2015 vs 2014 in semi-custom was up. Units way up, ASP plenty down but revenue was up. The entire segment was down on year on everything else being down.