AMD shares fall 13% as forecast reveals uphill battle against Nvidia in AI chip market

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Advanced Micro Devices reported strong fourth-quarter earnings with revenue jumping 34% to $10.3 billion, but investor expectations for AI dominance went unmet. The company's first-quarter forecast signals sequential decline, raising questions about its ability to challenge Nvidia's grip on the booming AI chip market despite recent wins with OpenAI and Oracle.

AMD Beats Fourth-Quarter Earnings But Fails to Meet Inflated Investor Expectations

Advanced Micro Devices delivered solid fourth-quarter earnings that exceeded analyst predictions, yet the market response told a different story. AMD shares fall initially by more than 5% in after-hours trading, eventually plunging 13% the following day as investors digested what the numbers really meant for the company's position in the AI chip market

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. The chipmaker reported revenue of $10.27 billion for the quarter, up 34% year-over-year and comfortably above the $9.67 billion consensus estimate

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. Net income climbed to $1.51 billion, or $1.53 per share excluding certain costs, compared to just $482 million in the year-ago period and beating the expected $1.32 per share. Despite these wins, the results exposed a critical vulnerability in AMD's AI narrative that sent investors scrambling.

Source: Benzinga

Source: Benzinga

AMD Forecast Signals Sequential Decline Despite China Boost

The real disappointment came in AMD's guidance for the current quarter. The company projected first-quarter revenue of approximately $9.8 billion, plus or minus $300 million, representing a sequential decline of roughly 5% from the fourth quarter

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. While this forecast technically exceeded the average analyst estimate of $9.39 billion, some projections had topped $10 billion, reflecting inflated investor expectations for the AI chips segment. The guidance included an unexpected element: AMD revealed it generated $390 million in revenue from shipping its older-generation MI308 chips to Chinese customers in the fourth quarter, with about $100 million of such sales anticipated in the current period. These China export controls had previously restricted the company's ability to serve that market, but recent licensing approvals provided a temporary boost. However, when stripping out these unanticipated China sales, AMD's data center business would have delivered $4.99 billion in revenue, falling below the $5.07 billion estimate

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Data Center Business Growth Masks Deeper Competitive Concerns

AMD's data center business, the primary beneficiary of AI infrastructure spending, generated $5.38 billion in the fourth quarter, up 39% year-over-year and ahead of the $4.97 billion average prediction. Chair and CEO Lisa Su emphasized that fiscal 2025 was a defining year for the company, achieving record revenue and earnings through broad-based demand for its AI platforms, particularly the Instinct MI300 series GPUs

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. The company has secured major customers including OpenAI and Oracle, with multi-year deals expected to generate tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue

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. AMD is also preparing to ship Helios, a new integrated server-scale AI system featuring dozens of MI455X chips, later this year, with Su noting "active discussions" with customers for additional orders

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. Yet the competition with Nvidia remains fierce, with AMD holding only a small portion of the AI chip market despite being widely considered Nvidia's most significant rival

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. Growing adoption of custom AI chips by tech giants and Google's multi-billion dollar deal to supply Anthropic with advanced processors have intensified pressure on AMD's market position

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Source: BNN

Source: BNN

Gains in PC Market Offset by Supply Chain Headwinds

Beyond AI chips, AMD demonstrated strength in its client and gaming segment, which delivered $3.9 billion in sales during the quarter, up 37% year-over-year

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. The growth was driven by demand for Ryzen processors for laptops and PCs, with the company continuing to gain market share against rival Intel

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. Intel's recent disappointing forecast, citing supply constraints that prevented it from meeting strong demand, suggested AMD was well-positioned to capture additional share. The company's EPYC CPUs also contributed to data center revenue as hyperscalers expanded infrastructure to meet growing cloud services and AI demand

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. However, the semiconductor industry faces broader challenges, including a global shortage of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that accompany AI processors made by both AMD and Nvidia

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. Memory supply constraints could hamper growth despite strong demand, while rising memory prices threaten to impact end-market demand in the PC industry

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Source: Reuters

Source: Reuters

What This Means for AMD's AI Ambitions

The market's harsh reaction reflects a fundamental tension between AMD's actual performance and the sky-high investor expectations that have driven its stock price up more than double over the past year

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. "The expectations for large blowout quarters for AI-related hardware companies have skewed what the market is looking for," explained Bob O'Donnell, president of TECHnalysis Research

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. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon noted that without the China boost, overall results weren't much beyond "inline," adding that near-term AI numbers "are not really inflecting"

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. Lisa Su attempted to reassure investors by stating that demand for next-generation AI servers, including shipments to OpenAI and other customers, is set to accelerate sharply in the second half of the year, and that global memory-chip shortages would not constrain production

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. The company is also moving beyond just selling chips to offering full AI systems, including rack-scale configurations that combine GPUs, CPUs, and networking gear to better compete against Nvidia

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. With AMD trading at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 33.16, investors will be watching closely to see whether the promised second-half acceleration materializes and whether the company can demonstrate it has the supply chain clout to truly challenge Nvidia's dominance in the AI chip market.

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