Sunday, November 25, 2007

Intel increases dividend

Intel raised their cash dividend by 13% effective quarter 1 2008.

I had mentioned earlier they may increase their stock buy back to have a blow out Q407. This looks like an alternative route to having the same effect. Basically signalling to the market that the board believe the fundamentals are incredibly strong. Personally, I prefer stock buy backs because reducing the outstanding shares nudges up the EPS which is what many investors keep their eye on.

Dividends are great for long term investors but many tend to overlook this.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

AMD stock south of $11

I'm going to say I told you so...because I did.

Now I'm not trying to gloat even though it's gratifying to be right. However, the problem here is AMD continues to pile on the debt and dilute shareholder value/equity as Hector blindly chases 30% market share in a bid to topple Intel.

The wise man would run away to fight again another day. But Hector is not behaving wisely at all. And it is a matter of time before he is no longer the man in charge. First they'll replace his CEO responsibilities with Dirk Meyer. And then they will quietly ease him out a few months later. And this is going to happen within a couple of months. Specially if Hector cannot deliver a kick @$$ Q4 coupled with a stroke of genius in terms of their asset lite strategy.



The EEE PC - the future is nigh

Back here I had written a post on the EEE PC.

The EEE PC is selling like hot-cakes. This is the future my friends. A low cost, reasonable performance, ultra portable PC. And this will only get better with SIlverthorne and some of other Intel's products on their roadmap. Imagine what a killing they're going to make with a 25$ CPU on which they can still make 50-60% margins. AMD is about to miss out on a big new profitable market. Kind of the way the other MP3 guys watched Apple seduce the world with the iPod. Notebook switches the world over will get accelerated. Governments will want this technology inside their versions of OLPC or whatever thing they're buying for mass education.

This is a game that AMD is not even in. The market is going away from them once again.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

AMD sells stake to Abu Dhabi

AMD heads back to the market for more cash. This time Abu Dhabi buys an 8.1% stake.

Interestingly, AMD only got 12.70 $ per share so there really wasn't any premium. Which is interesting and a telling sign. The positive of this transaction is that they now have a vested interest from backer who has unlimited funding at his disposal. So should they need to secure more cash, they know where to go. The down-side seems to be that this backer isn't paying a premium so it's shareholder equity to which they must say "ta ta".

In other news, anyone seen wide availability of Barcelona yet. Very very disappointing launch and Phenom isn't that much better either. Anandtech has a review. Core 2 Quad whoops the Phenom's ass and when Penryn comes out, AMD will need to churn out faster Phenoms at lower prices. There is only one way for AMD to win in this environment. Cut your prices and trash your margins. Not good for business though.

And all this while Intel is developing low cost high margin products like Silverthorne. When Otellini displayed this some months ago, I said this is a game changing product. If the reviews of the EEE PC are and indicator of what a reasonable performance low cost part can do, AMD needs to seriously re-consider it's strategy. Because Hector is nowhere close to 30% market share and better forget that dream.

In fact, I'd be pleasantly surprised if he stays in his job for another 30 weeks.

Monday, October 22, 2007

AMD Q3 07 and some related thoughts on Intel

AMD had an improved quarter too:
Press release
Results

Let's look at the same numbers as the Intel report below to see whether there are some market trends emerging.

- Revenues of 1.632 billion up from 1.378 billion in Q2.
- EPS loss of 71 cents which beat the street forecast.In dollars this was 396 million.
- Gross margin 41% up 8% from 33% in Q2. However, 2 points of the improvement came from an inventory write off in Q2 so the real gain is 6%.
- Inventories down 53 millon.
- Headcount down 221 to 16,498.

And some other interesting facts and figures...

- Graphics revenue up 57 million and the losses of 50 million in Q2 are now down to just 3 million.
- ASPs up in desktop and mobile but down in server.
- AMD sees no evidence of over booking too and Rivet too was concerned that inventories were lower than he'd like.

I had said earlier, AMD will lose around 300 million and they did not disappoint. It will be very difficult for them to go into the black in Q4. Rivet says he needs around 2 billion of revenue at 40% + gross margin. However, that will be extremely difficult as it means every incremental $ of revenue needs to drop straight into the bottom-line in Q4.

What seems to be happening is both Intel and AMD have been surprised by some spectacular demand and both of them are tight on capacity. Hence, with almost full factories, their gross margins are naturally shooting up. In addition, at times like this they can afford to ignore lower end less profitable business when supply is constrained. The key in Q4 will be managing their product builds. If they call the right product mix their customers want and have it built, they will be laughing to the bank. However, any screw up on forecasting and it will mean leaving revenue on the table that could have been had.

The couple of other things I wanted to comment on:

1. Intel's static ASP vs AMD's improvement. Intel did say desktop ASPs improved while AMD said desktop/mobile improved but server was down. Here's what I think is going on. AMD is slugging it out with a lot of discounting in the server space as they are disadvantaged against Intel's newer products. Hence, they are pulling server pricing down. In mobile, even though AMD is using price to gain entry/share, they are still seeing an uplift as a mobile CPU improves their ASP compared to a desktop part. And some of their new customers like Toshiba tend to sell higher end SKUs. However, Intel is being forced to lower their pricing on mobile as AMD becomes more competitive. However, as Santa Rosa ramps and Penryn comes through, they may be able to create some uplift in mobile ASPs too.

2. It's now obvious that over booking is not a concern and end user demand is robust. Which is a good sign for not only AMD/Intel but also the global economy. Usually tech products and PCs are the first to see demand drop during a recession. It will be interesting to see Apple/Microsoft/Motorola's results this week too.

3. Expect both AMD and Intel to have blow out quarters. Specially Intel. While they are forecasting a mid-point of 10.8 billion for Q4, I think they can hit 11 billion. And get their Q4 profits very close to 2.5 billion which should drive their EPS close to 40 cents. I also think Intel will be aggressive with their share buy back as this is a golden opportunity to have a blow out quarter and drive their EPS and hence share price up.

This is going to be a good quarter for both the players. The guys who should be worried are the OEMs and specially channel as they fight to get supply. HP and Dell have a natural advantage due to their scale. But in the notebook business folks like Acer are becoming big players rapidly so it's going to be interesting. Expect the entire PC industry to have a great Christmas if demand remains strong.




Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Intel Q3 07

Intel announced a bang up quarter today:
Results


- Revenues of 10.1 billion. Well above the updated forecast of 9.6.
- EPS 31 cents. Beating the Street by 1 cent.
- Gross margin 52.4%. At the high end of their forecast and up 5.5% QoQ.
- Inventories down ~550 million.
- Headcount down to 88k

The story is demand is robust. ASPs are flat. The re-structuring is helping drive down costs and make Intel a trimmer company.

Q407 outlook:
- Revenue 10.5 - 11.1 billion. Mid-point of 10.8 billion.
- Gross margin 57 points +/- a couple of points.
- Headcount down another 2k to 86k.


It mostly sounds like good news. Demand is wonderful. Mobile continues to show strong growth. Costs continue to decrease. We have a leaner stronger Intel.

But there are a few areas of concern:

- Accounts receivables is up by 400 million. Which almost accounts for the entire inventory reduction. The Street is concerned there's been over-booking in Q3 and this will impact Q4 sell through. While it's not unusual to load inventory in Q3 anticipating Q4 is the biggest qtr of the year. But there could be some truth in Wall Street's concerns.

- In spite of a renewed product line and competitive pricing - ASPs remain flat! What's going on...? It's simple. AMD is competing hard and the OEMs are extremely happy to counter-balance Intel's influence with a reasonable mix of AMD product. The real problem here is in Intel's marketing. What's going on is end users either don't care about what CPU they are buying or are so price conscious that they are willing to trade off on the brand. This is highly likely a problem for them in emerging markets. But the bottom line is the OEMs are able to negate Intel's strong brand to a good extent.

I think Intel is being conservative in their guidance ever since their fiasco in early 2006. So I do expect them to meet their Q4 guidance. And if everything clicks - to even beat that guidance. However, AMD is competing hard and probably using pricing to try and win back share. Which I think they will have gained some since they should have cleaned out their channel issues by now. While they're still losing money, their focus is to fill their factories in order to drive up gross margin and share. Even if it means lower ASPs.

As for Penryn and Barcelona. These will not have much impact in Q4. Intel will see some benefit to gross margins probably factored into their Q4 guidance already. Going into 2008 these will take on greater significance and the heat will be turned up by both with new products having real availability. Who will win. The end user. Because AMD will probably start to drop prices if they find they're not gaining traction fast enough. Which will create another mini price war. The bottom-line problem is there's too much capacity between the two players and neither of them seems to be slowing down in their drive to keep building capacity.


I'm back...

I've been away from the blog for a few weeks and I apologize. I've been pre-occupied with some other stuff and essentially there's been a whole lot of nothing going on between AMD and Intel as both try and stabilize business, share and most importantly margins.

However, Intel's announcement this morning is a good segue to get back to the blog.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Another one bites the dust

AMD loses another senior sales executive.

It seems like rats are deserting the sinking ship. It would have been ok if Henri left and was replaced by someone else. However, Henri leaves, Hector says I'lld do the job and now Rick Hegberg leaves. These are not good signs for AMD. On the positive side. Their costs are reducing.

I wonder if Hector will be doing this job too? Troubling times for AMD. With Barcelona finally arriving, it's tough for them to lose two senior sales guys.

AMD will lose at least 300 million USD this quarter.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

BofA upgrades Intel

Bank Of America increases their price target on Intel from 29$ to 31$.

Intel is on a roll. Barcelona is not going to save AMD. Not with Penryn coming in less than 60 days from launch.

Still not Barcelona performance numbers with a week to launch. They must be working day and night to get competitive performance and are still struggling.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The first head to roll

Henri Richard - chief sales and marketing honcho at AMD quit today.

Link 1
Link 2

Sales and marketing will now directly report into Hector. Heads have started to roll at the Jolly Green Giant. When you miss your revenue target quarter on quarter, the first person to blame is your sales guy. Of course, can you blame him if you are obsessed with winning market share even though your current product line up is not competitive enough? A message must be sent - and it starts with Henri.

But what's pretty darn foolish is that Hector is now going to run sales and marketing. Intel must be laughing with glee. Hector now has to do two jobs which means it's highly likely neither will get done well. Or perhaps they're sad because the mistakes Hector has been making over the last few quarters as CEO are worth more to them.

Either ways, this is a signal. AMD needs to scale back their headcount. Another bad quarter or two and either Bob Rivet or Phil Hestor are probably going down. Bob - for constantly mis-leading Wall Street and not managing AMD's cost structure effectively. Phil - for not developing a product roadmap that was competitive enough or perhaps for building an architecture that was too difficult for AMD to manufacture.

I predicted an AMD stock price of 11.50 - 13.00. We're there now people. This is going further south. Over the next 6 months this is going below 11.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

AMD selling assets...

...in this case a big field behind their HQ in Sunnyvale apparently.

I guess that should reduce their Q3 losses by a few million.

Desperate times at AMD. I repeat, they need to cut heads and costs. The way to cut costs is by Hector focussing on key projects and not trying to do everything. Some time ago I had predicted the PIC would die. It actually did - and then foolishly was revived. Hector needs to stop chasing the market share dream as well as the dream of AMD becoming some kind of mammoth platform company in 2008. You're in a hole - don't dig yourself a new one Mr Ruiz. Focus on digging yourself out of this one before you drive AMD into the ground and a lot more innocent employees have to pay the price.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Barcelona continues to have problems

AMD continues to have problems with Barcelona.

What can I say. With a launch that wasn't soon enough and production problems, all they need now is for the performance to be disappointing and they will be toast.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Penryn launch date set

Penryn is on track for November 11.

AMD will not have enough lead time in the market with Barcelona to establish a lead. Since the only proof we have of Barcelona's superiority to Penryn is that AMD tells us they're better than the current generation Clovertown, it's unlikely they will have much performance advantage. And possibly be at a disadvantage. As a result, they will not be able to enjoy rich margins on Barcelona as one would expect with a new technology introduction should Intel price Penryn competitively. Which I'm sure they will do because they still want to recover market share.

AMD's Barcelona investments are looking like they will not pay off on the top line as much as they would have liked. Losses will continue for AMD and unless they cut back costs now, I think will continue to be in the range of 200-300 million in Q3.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

AMD continues to borrow

AMD heads back to the capital markets to borrow 1.5 billion through the issuance of convertible notes at 5.75%.

They intend to re-pay the the Morgan Stanley loan as per the conditions of that loan with this money and use the balance for working capital.

This adds more pressure to AMD's financials and their stock price.

Hector and team will have to cut back costs at this rate. I said earlier, they need to scale back to about 15 thousand people. Doing a wimpy lay off of 400-500 people is not enough. As much as I hate the fact that innocent employees will lose their jobs because management wasn't competent enough at their's. I felt the same way when Intel was laying off people.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

AMD stock heading South

I ranted and raved about how the analysts are pumping up AMD's share price even as it loses money. I had called a trading range of 11.50 - 13.00 in the commentary of one of my posts (can't be bothered to look for it now).

AMD is now trading around $ 12.50. I expect this to go still further South close to 12. Will it drop to 10...it should. But at that point it probably starts looking attractive to the private equity guys and there are probably enough interested parties that want to keep AMD afloat so my expectation is it will stay above 11.

It appears Penryn is more than a die shrink.

AMD is in deep trouble as Barcelona still seems to be in some trouble being manufactured and they have not yet allowed the tech sites to publish any independant benchmarks.

However, Intel is also not out of the woods. To accelerate their stock price, they need to grow revenues faster than the market. And their best bets to do this are Silverthorne and monetizing Wimax at the service level and not just the hardware level.