AMD Stock Rises 9% As A.I. Chip Sales Accelerate

The stock of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is up 9% after the semiconductor company reported financial results that showed accelerating sales of its artificial intelligence (A.I.) microchips.

AMD, as the company is known, announced earnings per share (EPS) of $0.69 U.S., which topped Wall Street forecasts of $0.68 U.S.

Revenue for the year’s second quarter totaled $5.84 billion U.S., which was ahead of consensus expectations of $5.72 billion U.S.

The better-than-expected results were attributed to robust sales of the company’s A.I. chips, with sales of its new MI300X chip exceeding $1 billion U.S. during the quarter.

Owing to the brisk sales, AMD again raised its projection for sales of its A.I. chips this year, saying it now expects revenue to exceed $4.50 billion U.S. in 2024.

Last fall, AMD was forecasting 2024 A.I. chip sales of $2 billion U.S. It raised that forecast to $4 billion U.S. in April of this year.

AMD’s A.I. chip sales are reported in the company’s Data Centre unit, which rose 115% year-over-year to $2.80 billion U.S. due to strong global demand.

Analysts had been expecting $2.75 billion U.S. in Q2 Data Centre revenue.

AMD is now the world’s second largest vendor of data centre graphics processing units (GPUs) that are used to train A.I. models, behind archrival Nvidia (NVDA).

In addition to it’s A.I. chips, AMD also reported that revenue for its core business making central processors (CPUs) for laptop computers and servers rose 49% from a year earlier to $1.50 billion U.S., beating forecasts of $1.43 billion U.S.

Executives at AMD said the personal computer market is recovering following a post-pandemic sales slump.

AMD’s other main business is making microchips and processors for video game consoles. That unit reported $648 million U.S. in Q2 revenue, down 59% from a year ago and missing analyst forecasts that called for sales of $676 million U.S.

In terms of guidance, AMD said it expects $6.70 billion U.S. in revenue during the current quarter versus Wall Street forecasts of $6.61 billion U.S. in sales.

Prior to today (July 31), AMD’s stock had gained 21% over the last 12 months and was trading at $138.44 U.S. per share.