AMD surges after a stellar earnings report (AMD)

The chipmaker reported adjusted earnings of $0.11 per share on revenue of $1.65 billion while increasing its second-quarter revenue guidance.

Shares of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) are set to open up more than 9% Thursday, at $10.60, after the chipmaker reported first-quarter results that topped analyst expectations.

For the first three months of 2018, AMD said it earned an adjusted $0.11 per share, outpacing the $0.09 that analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting. Revenue was $1.65 billion, which was ahead of the $1.57 billion that Wall Street was anticipating.

"The first quarter was an outstanding start to 2018 with 40 percent year-over-year revenue growth,” said Lisa Su, AMD's president and CEO, in a press release. "PC, gaming and datacenter adoption of our new, high-performance products continues to accelerate. We are excited about our long-term roadmaps and focused on delivering sustained revenue growth and profitability."

AMD also increased its second quarter revenue guidance to $1.725 billion, a 50% increase over the same quarter in 2017.

The crypto craze that peaked in January provided a boost for GPU makers like AMD and its competitor NVDA. But as prices have fallen in 2018, so too has would-be miners interest in the chips that were traditionally only popular among PC gamers.

"Ultimately, we don’t believe Crypto GPU Rev is sustainable and see 3 potential issues: (1) Price volatility in Ethereum which makes mining less economical, (2) Bitmain’s Ethereum ASIC scheduled for release in July, and (3) An increased probability of Crypto moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake negating the need for mining/GPUs all together," Credit Suisse analyst John Pitzer warned clients ahead of the earnings report.

AMD did not directly mention cryptocurrencies in its quarterly filing — but will almost certainly be asked about their impact on its bottom line by analysts on the conference call later Wednesday evening.

"AMD had a blowout revenue quarter, beating guidance and growing 40% year on year which would make it the third straight quarter of double digit YoY revenue growth," Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said in an email. "The growth was led by sales of AMD's Ryzen client CPU and APU product line in desktops and notebooks. I expect AMD to show even more gains next quarter based on channel fill of second generation Ryzen desktop CPU, increased distribution of Ryzen mobile notebooks and the continued ramp of EPYC server deployments.

Shares of AMD are down 4% since the beginning of the year.

AMD surges after a stellar earnings report (AMD)

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