AMD - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Public, NYSE:AMD)

[ItsLance]

AMD

I've been watching this stock for a while, and I am getting pretty confident in it as a play for myself. AMD recently raised guidance for Q4 2009 and while their financials are a mess, they are improving and their current ratio is almost 2:1. AMD has really begun to hold its own in the video graphics hardware landscape, especially in netbooks where it claims 53% market share. It's main competitor is nVidia, which is focusing on a smaller less powerful chipsets for smartphones. At this time AMD has no plans on entering the smartphone market (which will probably be a shot in the foot for the company in the long term). Just keep in mind that there is risk with this company, and make sure you do your own due diligence. This is not a recommendation, but an opinion, so as always, the risk is yours.

Here are some recent events that, I believe, show some real promise for the company moving forward:

LATEST KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Troublemaker Studios Transforms Imagination into Reality On Big Screen With Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Technology
Tuesday, 24 Nov 2009 07:25pm EST
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced that Troublemaker Studios is using Six-Core AMD Opteron processors and ATI FirePro graphics accelerators to create animations and special effects for its films, including Shorts, now available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Announces Pricing Of Private Offering Of $500 Million Senior Notes
Monday, 23 Nov 2009 04:10pm EST
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced that it has agreed to sell $500 million aggregate principal amount of its 8.125% Senior Notes due 2017 in a private offering. The Company intends to close the transaction on November 30, 2009. The Company estimates that the net proceeds from the issuance and sale of the senior notes will be approximately $439 million after deducting original issue discount of 10.204%, the initial purchasers` discounts and estimated transactions expenses. AMD intends to use the net proceeds, along with existing cash, to purchase its 5.75% Convertible Senior Notes due 2012 validly tendered pursuant to the Company's tender offer for such notes, which was previously announced. Net proceeds not used in the tender offer, if any, will be used for general corporate purposes.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Announces Private Offering of $500 Million of Senior Notes
Wednesday, 18 Nov 2009 07:00am EST
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced that it intends to commence an offering, of $500 million aggregate principal amount of senior notes in a private offering. The Company intends to use the proceeds, along with existing cash, to purchase its 5.75% Convertible Senior Notes due 2012 validly tendered pursuant to the Company's tender offer for such notes, which was also announced. Net proceeds not used in the tender offer, if any, will be used for general corporate purposes.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Introduces ATI Radeon HD 5970
Wednesday, 18 Nov 2009 12:01am EST
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced the flagship installment in the line of graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5970. The new ultra high-end model joins a growing list of the graphics cards to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology. Designed to support the demanding PC games at ultra-high resolutions and image quality settings, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 has unlocked overclocking potential, granting access to every bit of power the card has to offer through ATI Overdrive technology.

Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Announce Settlement Of All Antitrust and IP Disputes
Thursday, 12 Nov 2009 09:00am EST
Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced a comprehensive agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes between the companies, including antitrust litigation and patent cross license disputes. Under terms of the agreement, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel obtain patent rights from a new five year cross license agreement, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement, and Intel will pay Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion. Intel has also agreed to abide by a set of business practice provisions. As a result, Advanced Micro Devices will drop all pending litigation including the case in U.S. District Court in Delaware and two cases pending in Japan. Advanced Micro Devices will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide. The agreement will be made public in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Comments On Q4 2009 Revenue Outlook-Conference Call
Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 09:00pm EDT
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced that for the fourth quarter of 2009, it expects revenue to be up modestly. According to Reuters Estimates, analysts on an average are expecting the Company to report revenue of $1.364 billion for the same period.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. And CyberLink Corp. Announce Strategic Initiative To Accelerate Consumer Video Applications With Windows 7 DirectX 11 DirectCompute
Thursday, 8 Oct 2009 11:15pm EDT
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. and CyberLink Corp. announced that the companies are expanding their existing engineering engagement with a strategic focus on Microsoft DirectX 11 DirectCompute, taking advantage of the capabilities of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.'s new DirectX 11-capable graphics architecture. The companies will work together to accelerate many computationally intensive tasks in CyberLink applications, such as video transcoding, automated facial recognition and tagging, video editing and processing applications with ATI Stream technology using the full specification capabilities of the new Windows 7 DirectCompute API.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Names Thomas Seifert As Chief Financial Officer
Thursday, 8 Oct 2009 09:00am EDT
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced the appointment of Thomas Seifert as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Seifert succeeds Robert Rivet, who was previously promoted to Chief Operations and Administrative Officer.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Announces Open Physics Initiative Designed To Bring New Levels Of Realism To Gaming, Simulation Applications
Wednesday, 30 Sep 2009 12:10am EDT
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. and Pixelux Entertainment announced a joint development agreement that is part of the AMD effort to expand the use of real time physics with graphics through the open source Bullet Physics engine. By encouraging development of physics middleware built around OpenCL and Bullet Physics, AMD and Pixelux offer a route toward physics simulation that spans game consoles, PCs and other hardware platforms. The latest graphics technologies, like the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of GPUs, offer incredible visual fidelity and high performance physics simulation by taking the next step in realistically animating how rendered game objects move, deform and break.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. And Partners Introduces ATI Eyefinity Multi Display Technology
Thursday, 10 Sep 2009 04:00pm EDT
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. announced that the Company and its industry partners introduced ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, a feature in the upcoming next generation ATI Radeon family of DirectX 11 enabled graphics processors. AMD is working closely with display partner Samsung Electronics to introduce ultra-thin bezel monitors and compatible stands that can easily be tiled to create an even more immersive and virtually seamless ATI Eyefinity experience.

[Ensui]

AMD has really begun to hold its own in the video graphics hardware landscape, especially in netbooks where it claims 53% market share.

I don't know the exact figures but I know for a fact they don't have 53% market share of ANY video hardware. Intel is in first place in all PC markets ie. notebooks, netbooks, desktop. Nvidia is in second place and AMD is a close third only in desktop video cards.

What AMD has is pretty much a good mainstream gaming video card company that provides great bang for the buck and holds the crown for fastest video card.

The company is pretty much second rate in everything else though.
AMD was a year or two slow in catching the netbook craze. Now they're trying to play catchup. The good things that have been happened is that they got rid of their horrible CEO and are no longer manufacturing their own CPUs. They contract manufacturing out to third parties which saves them from the difficulties of the process.

IMO they suck at CPU innovation, but you never know with these things because sometimes they pull something out of their sleeves. That hasn't happened with AMD since the 90s so, yea. I thought the funniest thing was that they tried to push for triple cores CPUs. Basically it was a quad core processor that had one gimped/broken core that did not pass quality control.

The selling point of AMD is that they have a good bang for the buck but that's not a good thing for margins/profits because even with the bang for the buck thing going for them, no one wants AMD stuff. It's just consumer sentiment that hasn't changed since the beginning. Computer geeks love AMD though. AMD is good to overclock and tweek and stuff but even Intel has caught up on that end.

Intel is pretty much forced to throw AMD a bone here and there to avoid monopoly laws.

Their canadian counterpart, ATI is something to be admirable of and they've been the winner in mainstream video cards business for the past 2 or 3 years but that industry is slowing down.

The bad news is that AMD hasn't been good at innovating anything but graphics cards.

The good news is that AMD hasn't been good at innovating anything but graphics cards.

Anyone who follows tech knows the situation very well so AMD has room to grow, improve, and surprise because they don't do well so most people have low expectations.

[ItsLance]

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that according to the latest industry data, notebook manufacturers have chosen ATI Mobility Radeon™ Premium graphics processors to drive more than half of today’s discrete graphics notebooks. The data for mobile discrete graphics reveals a 36.5% market share gain, and 87.27% more units sold quarter-over-quarter through the first six months of 2009.1 AMD now holds the “Number 1” position with an overall 53% mobile discrete market share. The incredible momentum behind ATI Mobility Radeon Premium graphics processors is a result of:

--Advanced performance, leading features, and innovative technology delivered by the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series of graphics processors, such as ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4530 and ATI Mobility Radeon™ 4670, including support for the latest Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 enabling a home theater-quality HD multimedia experience, and an energy-efficient design for long battery life at work, at home or at play.

--With well over 200 design wins of current and future commitments from leading manufacturers worldwide, customer adoption of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series of graphics processors has increased across a wide range of mobile discrete notebook segments, including the HP Pavilion dv6T, Alienware M17, Acer Aspire 5739G, Toshiba Satellite M500, Sony VAIO FW Series, Samsung R522, Asus W90Vp-X1, MSI GX623 and Dell Studio 15 -- a balanced portfolio of AMD -- and competitor-based notebook platforms.

--An augmented presence in retail, including Best Buy Canada and Future Shop with a focus on the HP Pavilion dv6 Artist Edition Entertainment Notebook PC featuring AMD Turion™ Ultra X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4650 graphics.

Source:http://www.businesswire.com/portal/s...07&newsLang=en

AMD today announced that according to the latest industry data, over half of notebooks using dedicated (non-integrated) graphics are using ATI Mobility Radeon chips. AMD has an overall 53% share of the notebook dedicated graphics market. The Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series, which includes the HD 4530 and HD 4670, has helped AMD achieve more market share.

Source: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5213

I think they are starting to shake things up, although I find it troublesome that they aren't getting involved in smart phones. That seems to highlight your point about the company not being very innovative/trailblazing.

[ItsLance]

Just a reminder, AMD reports tomorrow after the close. Here is what analysts are expecting:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amd...k=MW_news_stmp

[pdtpatrick]

Few articles were out on AMD and looks like their price target is about $9 - $12 this year. I've sold my puts and bought some calls. Looks like we could see a rebound here shortly. I actually bought verticals on this one instead of singles.

Here's the chart.

[Ensui]

http://gizmodo.com/5467074/amds-plan...-the-llano-apu

[pdtpatrick]

$8 strikes and even ITM calls for these calls are not bad.

I'm liking the look of this even though I already hold INTC.

[SK_]

I'm amazed we don't have more interest in this stock..
AMD Announces Extension of Exchange Offer of its 8.125% Senior Notes due 2017 for Registered Notes

[ItsLance]

I'm a little less enamored with AMD than I once was. I've actually shifted over to ARMH, since that one has been really moving lately due largely to Apple's success.