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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Intel999 - Thursday, January 21, 2016 - link
The segment that semi custom is in is mixed with other sales channels such as embedded, server chips, and probably their memory sales. Also the amount that AMD was paid per console chipset was lower in 2015 than it was in 2014 as part of the pricing agreement with Sony and Microsoft. It will be slightly lower in 2016 as well, however, it is expected that both Sony and Microsoft will be lowering their retail prices this year to drive volume. AMD anticipates the higher volume to overcome the lower selling price they will be receiving to drive higher overall revenues from console sales.In short, the drop in overall sales cannot be blamed solely on console sales. I'm sure a big chunk of it is due to lower Opteron sales year over year.
jjj - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
Console royalties means Nintendo and other older gen consoles. The PS4 and XB! are categorized as semi-custom.testbug00 - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
price per chip bought by Microsoft and Sony lessens. I think AMD also makes a little bit of money from the Xbox 360 and Wii/Wii U consoles.Sony and Microsoft's purchases for the holiday season also fall under AMD's 3Q2015 results as time required to build and ship to stores.
Duckeenie - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
Nvidia has >80% discreet graphics market share according to the first couple of Google sources I managed to find.HighTech4US - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/188158281.1%
tuxRoller - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
I look forward to the day when amd goes under and Intel, along with nvidia, are split up under antitrust.frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - link
That may have been true if it had happened 10 years ago, but now, both have plenty of competition from mobile.Intel may be the only game in town in desktop, but ARM (through Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, Mediatek...) is selling more designs per year than intel.
Similarly, in mobile, Nvidia is competing (and lost, really) with Qualcomm (Adreno, former ATI mobile group), ARM (in Samsung and Mediatek chips), PowerVR (Apple chips) and others (vivando...).
So, there is a case to make for both, but it's unlikely they would be split. Moreover, the US administration has shown great reluctance in applying antitrust lately...
iwod - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
I think Zen is too little too late. The only thing it will do is force Intel to lower its price, Xeon-D, and Xeon E5. I just do not see AMD's way out, and their Radeon Graphics are doing shit.May be they should be acquired by Intel. On a Financial Level, no one is interested to pick up a downtrend going company with lots of debt and little to no upside.
Intel could pick it up for less then $4B. Just Why hasn't Intel made the move yet?
( Monopoly doesn't really count as argument anymore, Desktop, Laptop market is shrinking. )
frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - link
In tel has literally nothing to gain from buying AMD.Few companies would, as their biggest asset, their x86 license, is officially non-transferable.
The rest of their assets (designs for both their CPU and GPU) have little value to anyone else, as those are very competitive businesses and a slew of underpowered competitors exist from mobile (which is the growing market).
webdoctors - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
They lost 84 cents per share in 2015. That's crazy, that's almost half their stock price. The remaining ATI engineers in Toronto can probably pool their money together and buy the company back and rename it ATI.I'm glad anandtech kept posting those ridiculous articles about superstar ABC or XYZ joining AMD, helped get the stock price back above $2 long enough for me to dump it. The company has some cool technology but the crappy management and brain drain of talent has sunk the company.
Its bad for all engineers in the industry when a company fails but the market place has no mercy.