Looks like AMD isn't done using red ink on its earnings releases. The company has posted financial results for the fourth quarter of 2014 and the year as a whole, and net income was negative for both.
Let's start with the quarterly results:
Q4 2014 | Q3 2014 | Q4 2013 | |
Revenue | $1.24 billion | $1.43 billion | $1.59 billion |
Operating income (loss) | ($330 million) | $63 million | $135 million |
Net income (loss) | ($364 million) | $17 million | $89 million |
Gross margin | 29% | 35% | 35% |
AMD suffered both declining revenue and a shrinking margin in Q4. Net losses were in the hundreds of millions of dollars, down considerably from a year ago.
AMD says revenue for its Computing and Graphics business fell 15% compared to the previous quarter and 16% from last year. Lower desktop processor sales are partly to blame for both decreases, according to the chipmaker. GPU sales slipped from Q3, while chipset sales declined from a year ago.
As for AMD's Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment, revenue dropped 11% sequentially due to "lower sales" but rose 51% year-over-year—thanks, presumably, to the arrival of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Here's the yearly data:
2014 | 2013 | 2012 | |
Revenue | $5.51 billion | $5.30 billion | $5.42 billion |
Operating income (loss) | ($155 million) | $103 million | ($1.06 billion) |
Net income (loss) | ($403 million) | ($83 million) | ($1.18 billion) |
Gross margin | 33% | 37% | 23% |
Those numbers aren't quite as dire, since they show some revenue growth for 2014. However, compared to 2013, AMD saw its gross margin decline and its losses increase.
What does CEO Lisa Su have to say about all this?
We made progress diversifying our business, ramping design wins and improving our balance sheet this past year despite challenges in our PC business. . . . Annual Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment revenue increased over 50% as customer demand for products powered by our high-performance compute and rich visualization solutions was strong. We continue to address channel headwinds in the Computing and Graphics segment and are taking steps to return it to a healthy trajectory beginning in the second quarter of 2015.
AMD doesn't plan to release its new Carrizo processors until mid-2015, so the Q2 uptick Su predicts may have to come from somewhere else. Here's hoping for some fresh meat on the graphics front.
In the meantime, AMD says it expects revenue to shrink 15% (give or take 3%) sequentially this quarter. If my math is right, that will mean revenue between $1.017 billion and $1.091 billion for Q1 2015, down from $1.4 billion for Q1 2014.