AMD chief hails Intel-assisted 'transformation'
Litigation pays
AMD president and chief executive Dirk Meyer has called the company's fourth-quarter 2009 financial results "another milestone in our transformation."
That is, a transformation from a money-losing microprocessor manufacturer in the same quarter last year, when it lost $1.424bn, to a profitable microprocessor designer in its most recent quarter, when it showed a "net favorable impact" of $1.224bn.
That income, however - AMD's first quarterly profit in three years - is due to the company's receipt of $1.25bn from Intel to settle their legal wrangling, a windfall that AMD promptly used to pay down a good chunk of its crippling debt.
As an AMD press release announcing the company's Q4 results on Thursday put it: "AMD reported operating income of $1.288 billion in the quarter, including a net favorable impact of $1.224 billion. The net favorable impacts were primarily from a legal settlement with Intel Corp."
Spinning off GlobalFoundries early this year didn't hurt, either.
Aside from that monumental cash infusion from Chipzilla, there was other good news in the quarter for AMD. Revenue increased to $1.646 billion, beating analysts' expectations of $1.49bn. That's a 48 per cent uptick when compared with the dreadful Q4 2008, and an 18 per cent increase when compared with the third quarter of 2009
Taken as a whole, 2009 was noticeably rosier that 2008 for AMD. For the full just-ended year, the company reported revenue of $5.4bn and net income of $304m. In 2008, those numbers were $5.8bn income and a loss of $3.13bn. ®
COMMENTS
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Amd. Thanks to them a dual 3.00ghz processor costs $100 not $1000 bucks if intel was the only game in town.
They probably lost a lot of sales because people were choosing a laptop as their next computer instead of a desktop. They need to cover all bases.
I dont mind which manufacturer
produces my processor. As long as it is powerful, efficient and value for money who gives a damn which name is stamped on it.
This is good news for the market though. A competitive processor market is good news for everyone. AMD and Intel battling it out means cheaper and better end products for us!
Thumbs up, cos you know its good!
Highly relevant and important content for the discussion
Go, AMD go!
I've ditched Intel many years ago.
AMD's been ahead of Intel for years
Intel's marketing is really, really good, but AMD's selling Quad Cores that are very close in performance to the I5's/i7's which ripped off AMD's designs in order to gain a performance advantage. AMD's dual cores run circles around Core2 duo. AMD's Phenom Quads run rings around Intel's Core2 Quads. AMD should leapfrog the I5's and I 7's this year and they have 6 and 8 core units that will ship this year, too. http://sites.amd.com/us/atwork/promo/Pages/six-core-opteron.aspx
