Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:¶¶Òõ×îаæ) has settled into a trading range as investors wait to see how its new chips do in the market. As far as ¶¶Òõ×îаæ stock goes, the action has been downright boring, in fact.
The consensus estimates of the June quarter’s earnings, due out at the end of July, are for a small loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of $1.16 billion. That would represent a big improvement over the 8-cent loss and $984 million in revenues from the March quarter. But a loss is still a loss, and Advanced Micro needs to start making money now that its promises have become product.
Opinion on whether they can do this is divided.
¶¶Òõ×îаæ has nine analysts who call it a buy and five who call it an outright sell, with meaning … well, they don’t know what to think. What they do agree on is that ¶¶Òõ×îаæ needs to turn losses into profit soon, if it is to keep their attention.
As a result, ¶¶Òõ×îаæ stock has become rangebound after first-quarter earnings disappointed. A low of about $10 per share was put in early in May, and a high of nearly $13 per share was hit in early June. Shares are currently hovering midway between the two, at about $11.50 per share.
EPYC and Beyond
¶¶Òõ×îаæ offers Ryzen microprocessors and Vega graphics — high-end products that cost less than rival products from Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA).
They’re perfect for gaming PCs, which need high performance but whose users don’t have unlimited budgets. At the E3 game show, the company announced a supply deal with
Dell’s Alienware brand, a key player in that space.
But it’s in servers where the company hopes to get profits. ¶¶Òõ×îаæ’s new EPYC server chip specifications leaked out recently — the official announcement is due June 20. The figures look impressive, but Intel has 99% of this market with its x86 chips. that ¶¶Òõ×îаæ can overcome that.
But if it proves it can keep up with Intel’s technology, ¶¶Òõ×îаæ stock does become serious takeover bait, as I wrote earlier this month. A Chinese or Japanese buyer could give the company the capital boost needed to ramp up production, and ¶¶Òõ×îаæ’s intellectual property would make Asia, in theory, independent of American suppliers.
Will the Wolf Survive?
Advanced Micro Devices has always lived like a wolf at the margins of a human encampment, feeding on scraps, always appearing ready for taming but somehow never advancing nor retreating.
The current bull case for ¶¶Òõ×îаæ stock is that it’s now well-positioned to win share in gaming, and in cloud servers, which suddenly need higher-performance chips to deal with artificial intelligence applications. The artificial intelligence market is expected to grow 10-fold by 2020, then grow six-fold again in the succeeding five years. Advanced Micro has competitive technology.
The problem is that the market has heard such arguments before.
¶¶Òõ×îаæ is always just on the cusp of a market breakthrough. It either has a great new technology that will put it ahead or a great new market it’s about to dominate.
It just never seems to deliver.
Bottom Line on ¶¶Òõ×îаæ Stock
Advanced Micro Devices will remain an outsider looking in so long as it remains independent — an asset base of $2.5 billion loaded up with $1.4 billion in debt being inadequate in an increasingly capital-intensive market. ¶¶Òõ×îаæ lacks the cash to capitalize on its advantages, while its rivals need it to stay in the market so their own monopoly positions don’t become obvious.
As I wrote before, this chipmaker needs to be sold to prosper. That’s the news worth waiting for. Anything else remains a head fake. You buy ¶¶Òõ×îаæ stock because you are speculating on that sale, and a resulting bidding war.
I can see no other reason to own the stock.
is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of the historical mystery romance , available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at . As of this writing he owned no shares in companies mentioned in this article.