Back to top

Image: Bigstock

AMD Gears Up to Report Q1 Earnings: What's in the Offing?

Read MoreHide Full Article

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) is scheduled to report first-quarter 2020 results on Apr 28.

The company anticipates the impact of COVID-19 outbreak to be “modest” in first-quarter 2020, with revenues possibly coming near the lower end of its guidance of $1.8 billion (+/- $50 million).

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues stands at $1.78 billion, suggesting growth of 39.9% from the year-ago reported figure.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter earnings is pegged at 18 cents per share, unchanged over the last 30 days. The figure indicates an improvement of 200% from the prior-year quarter.

Notably, the company beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the trailing four quarters, matching the same twice. It has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 6.67%, on average.
 

Factors to Consider

Robust adoption of latest Ryzen, Radeon and EPYC server processors in the PC, gaming, cloud, HPC and data center verticals is expected to have benefited first-quarter performance.

Particularly, AMD’s second generation of its EPYC processors (code-named Rome and built on its Zen 2 microarchitecture) have been witnessing adoption by notable cloud players including Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. This momentum in latest EPYC processors is anticipated to have favored server revenue growth in the first quarter.

Increasing popularity of the company's products instill investor confidence in the stock. Notably, shares of AMD have gained 21.9% year to date, against the industry’s decline of 12%.



Additionally, AMD’s latest Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M mobile GPUs based on 7 nanometer (nm) RDNA architecture have been implemented in Apple’s (AAPL - Free Report) latest MacBook Pro to enable advanced graphics performance. Management also remains optimistic regarding growing clout of Ryzen 4000 mobile processors families across leading OEMs.

During the first quarter, AMD rolled out Ryzen Threadripper 3990X desktop processor featuring 128 threads and 64 cores. The new Ryzen Threadripper processor has been developed on Zen core architecture utilizing 7 nm process technology. Higher core count of Threadripper 3990WX is expected to have strengthened its competitive position against Intel in the high-end desktop market (HEDT).

Moreover, incremental revenues generated from Radeon RX 5500 GPU, Athlon PRO processors integrated with Radeon Vega Graphics and Ryzen PRO 3000 Series desktop processors are likely to have contributed to the first-quarter performance.

The aforementioned factors are likely to have driven revenues in the first quarter amid anticipated sluggishness in Semi Custom vertical.

However, deteriorating trend in PC shipments in first quarter, due to coronavirus crisis-induced supply constraints, is likely to have weighed on the company’s performance in the to-be-reported quarter. Per Gartner’s preliminary data, PC shipments in first-quarter 2020, declined 12.3% year over year to 51.6 million units.

Further, increasing expenses on product development amid stiff competition from NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) and Intel (INTC - Free Report) is likely to have limited margin expansion in the first quarter.

Zacks Rank

AMD currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Biggest Tech Breakthrough in a Generation

Be among the early investors in the new type of device that experts say could impact society as much as the discovery of electricity. Current technology will soon be outdated and replaced by these new devices. In the process, it’s expected to create 22 million jobs and generate $12.3 trillion in activity.

A select few stocks could skyrocket the most as rollout accelerates for this new tech. Early investors could see gains similar to buying Microsoft in the 1990s. Zacks’ just-released special report reveals 8 stocks to watch. The report is only available for a limited time.

See 8 breakthrough stocks now>>

Published in