Bolaji Ojo Courtesy of EE Times (01/18/2008 1:59 PM EST)

AMD had a string of other positive news for investors and its customers. It reported record microprocessor shipments -- probably gaining market share in the process -- and Rivet said it is "seeing growing demand for new product offerings in each of our businesses and in particular for our quad-core processors."

Perhaps the single most important thing that AMD did right during the December quarter was that it met expectations and matched its own forecast.

Analysts grown used to disappointing results from AMD were pleased to see it easily scale their lowered financial bars. Additionally, the company insisted that negative events in the larger economy were unlikely to hurt its outlook.

"Everything that we told you [at our Analysts' Day] meeting is on plan and there has been no change in any of the information that we gave you and the projections that we gave you into next year," crowed Hector Ruiz, AMD chairman and CEO, to analysts during the conference call.

It all sounded so convincing that it would have been easy to forget that AMD's $1.77 billion fourth quarter revenue was unchanged from the year-ago quarter or that it still wouldn't have been profitable if special charges related to its ATI acquisition were excluded from the results.

While margins improved and strong sales improvements seem to be on the horizon, AMD is still a troubled company. For instance, it is still trying to erase manufacturing missteps and transition operations to what it has described as an asset-smart strategy.

Details of that new system will have to wait for another day, according to Ruiz, who promised that he would be "delighted to tell you a lot of the details on it" after the company had made progress on the plan.

Perhaps for this very reason and the fact that obvious challenges remain on AMD's path, Ruiz may have to wait until the company posts a profit to get a congratulatory hug from the likes of John Barton, an analyst at SG Cowen, who is maintaining his "neutral" rating on the company.

"While we are encouraged by the relative performance improvements, we believe that the company still has a challenging road ahead on the competitive technology front as evidenced by the recent missteps associated with the launch of its Barcelona platform," Barton said.

Previous Page