AMD maintains profitable progress

By Alun Williams

Posted on 15 Apr 2004 at 11:14

AMD stays in the black.

According to its latest financial results, AMD has maintained its profitable progress - it records a net income of $45 million on revenues of $1.236 billion (for the three months to 28 March 2004). Sales of Flash memory helped drive the figures, along with lower costs of production following previous cutbacks.

These first-quarter results compare with sales of $715mn and a net loss of $146 million in the same period one year ago. In its last quarter, however, AMD had started making a profit again - Chip sales give AMD muscle to take on Intel

'Our performance in the first quarter of 2004 was driven by record sales, solid growth and strong execution,' commented R. J. Rivet, AMD's chief financial officer. 'Our Flash memory and microprocessor businesses delivered solid sales results in a seasonally down quarter and both business lines were profitable.'

Rivet highlighted the success of AMD's embedded products: 'AMD continued to increase its market leadership position in the wireless handset and embedded markets on the strength of our Spansion Flash memory solutions. During the quarter, products based on MirrorBit technology continued to gain solid acceptance, reflecting strong customer demand for their compelling price-performance advantage. In addition, we believe Spansion strengthened its NOR Flash market leadership position as it outpaced growth of the overall Flash market.'

He also identified 'strong enterprise demand' for the AMD64 platform, and the Opteron server processor in particular.

In terms of a future outlook, AMD expects to see a 'modest' increase in sales for its memory products, and a seasonally-based modest decline in sales for the microprocessor-based Computation Products Group.

See also:

Chip sales give AMD muscle to take on Intel

AMD's flash memory offshoot spawns whole new family