That is 11 quarters without a profit
Chipmaker
AMD reported its 11th consecutive losing quarter, prompting some analysts to
wonder if the outfit will ever emerge from the red.
True the $335 million
loss AMD reported for the three months that ended June 27 was an improvement
on the $414 million the company lost during the first quarter and
significantly better than the nearly $1.2 billion it lost in the second
quarter last year. Its revenue of $1.18 billion, relatively unchanged from
the first three months of the year.
CEO Dirk Meyer said that AMD in
recent months has made a big effort to cut costs in response to the
worldwide recession, while introducing a host of new products. He said
AMD's graphics-oriented chips are attracting new customers. He also noted
that government authorities are beginning to act on AMD's long-standing
claim that its main competitor, Santa Clara-based Intel, has monopolized the
microprocessor market. Meyer admitted that AMD's margins were
"disappointing." The company's gross margin for the second quarter was 37
percent, compared with 43 percent for the first quarter.
AMD announced in
October a multibillion-dollar infusion from Abu Dhabi investors, which
involved spinning off its manufacturing operations into a separate business.
But it is heavily in debt from its $5.6 billion purchase of graphics-chip
maker ATI Technologies in 2006. And like many other semiconductor companies,
AMD has been hurt by weakened consumer demand for personal computers and
other products containing its chips.
AMD aslo turned over its chip business
for handheld gadgets to Qualcomm for $65 million and sold its digital-TV
chip business to Broadcom for about $193 million. Analysts think that AMD
will turn to profit next year. However this seems to be a gut feeling rather
than anything based on actual facts.