Earnings

AMD earnings: Lowering expectations

AMD logo
AMD
  • Q1 revenue: $1.79 billion (+40% YoY, -16% QoQ vs. $1.78 billion expected)
  • Q1 earnings: $162 million (+$146m YoY, -$8m QoQ, in line with estimates)
  • Q2 guidance: $1.85 billion, plus or minus $100 million (slightly below expectations)

The big number: AMD's largest business unit, its computer and graphics segment, saw revenue in the quarter jump 73%year-over-year, driven in part by strong Ryzen processor sales.

People are talking: "We expect some softness in consumer demand in the second half of the year, depending on how overall macroeconomic conditions evolve," AMD President and CEO Lisa Su said on a call with analysts, but emphasized: "Our long-term strategy and growth drivers remain unchanged."

Opportunities: As the world shifts to working from home, AMD is benefitting from accelerated demand for server processors and increased PC sales, the company said. COVID-19 environment has been "positive for the data center market," Su added on the call. "We've seen some of our largest customers accelerate some of our deployments and we look forward to continuing to ramp our server business."

Threats: While there's been an initial boost in the need for cloud power and laptops, that demand could take a dip in the second half of the year. "The biggest question in my mind is the shape of the PC market this year," Su said. "We are expecting some weakness in the PC [and] notebook business in the second half of the year." AMD slightly lowered its revenue expectations for the full year in light of that risk.

The power struggle: AMD still doesn't have anywhere near the market power of rival Intel (which posted a resilient earnings report last week) when it comes to the server business. Su said server unit shipments more than tripled since last year, but analysts on the call said they thought AMD would do even better.
Fintech

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His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

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Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

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Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

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FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
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Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

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Donna Goodison

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Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

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Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

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