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AMD Trades Sideways Ahead of Earnings: What To Expect

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Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) traded sideways Tuesday morning, just hours before the chipmaker is set to release its latest quarterly earnings report.

AMD was among the many U.S. stocks that saw mixed performance on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell slightly after disappointing guidance from Boeing (BA - Free Report) and General Motors (GM - Free Report) , while the NASDAQ composite was lifted by gains from Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) , Facebook , and Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) .

Investor behavior toward AMD was varied in the run-up to today’s earnings announcement. Shares were down as much as 3.7% down before settling around a 0.2% gain by the early afternoon. It is possible that investors may not expect a mind-blowing report, but that they still believe the firm will post solid numbers. Either way, AMD is an interesting company to watch as it continues to battle for a larger share of the global semiconductor market.

But what should we expect from its soon-to-be-reported quarter? Let’s take a closer look.

Earnings Outlook

AMD will release its Q2 fiscal 2018 results shortly after the market closes today. Here’s what analysts are expecting, according to our Zacks Consensus Estimates:

Earnings: AMD is projected to report earnings of $0.12 per share, which would represent 500% growth from the year-ago period.

Estimate Revisions: The firm hasn’t seen any recent revisions to this quarter’s earnings estimates. However, it has seen positive revisions across the board for next quarter, the current fiscal year, and next fiscal year within the last two months.

Revenue: Consensus estimates have AMD’s Q2 revenue pegged at $1.72 billion. This would mark growth of 40.6% year over year.

Valuation

AMD is trading at 28.2x forward 12-month earnings heading into today’s report. This is a notable premium compared to the “Electronic-Semiconductor” industry’s average of about 11.3x, but is still more balanced than what we have come to expect from the stock in recent years.

Over the past year, AMD has traded as high as 639.4x and as low as 26x. Its 52-week median earnings multiple is 46.8x.

Bottom Line

AMD shares are up about 15% over the past year, so some investors may want to realize their gains instead of risking an earnings play. But while analyst revision activity for the quarter has been muted, AMD has a Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) of  2.45%.

A positive Earnings ESP paired with a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better ranking helps us feel confident about the potential for an earnings beat. In fact, our 10-year backtest has revealed that this methodology has accurately produced a positive surprise 70% of the time.

Given the stock’s current Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), this Earnings ESP value leaves us optimistic about AMD’s chances at beating estimates going into this afternoon’s report.

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