AMD's latest earnings should have Intel and Nvidia shaking

AMD is one of the few tech companies surging on Wall Street this past week, besting the likes of Intel and Apple with favorable earnings.

The chipmaker's revenue of $1.42 billion (about £1.09bn, AU$1.97bn) for its fourth quarter means that it was up 6% year-over-year.  Yes, it narrowly missed Wall Streets’ $1.44 billion (about £1.10bn, AU$2bn) estimates, its stock price is currently up more than $15 at the time of writing.

It's more than just the latest quarter that's gone well for AMD. As for its annual 2018 financial results, it reported $6.48 billion (about £4.96bn, AU$9.01bn) in revenue and a net income of $337 million (about £258m, AU$468m).

That's dramatically better than the total $5.3 billion (about £4.05bn, AU$7.37bn) in revenue and $33 million (about £25m, AU$46m) net income the company made last year.

What's behind AMD's growth?

AMD attributes its growth to a 50% increase in Ryzen desktop processor shipments and doubling enterprise-grade Epyc CPU shipments since the previous quarter.

Looking toward 2019, AMD CEO Lisa Su shared her hopes to see a 30% increase in Ryzen desktop processor sales and a 50% increase in notebook processor sales – the latter of which seems to be a major focus with the introduction of 2nd Gen Ryzen Mobile processors.

The golden child

Annual financial results time hasn’t been particularly kind to tech companies in 2018. Apple announced it was seeing a continuing slump with iPhone sales, with revenue for the smartphone falling 15%.

Before Nvidia even announces its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018 financial results on February 14, it lowered its fourth-quarter predictions by $500 million (about £382m, AU$695m). Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang cautioned “Q4 was an extraordinary, unusually turbulent and disappointing quarter.”

So far, AMD seems like the only company not to cry wolf about “deteriorating macroeconomic conditions” and the slowing economy in China impacting its business.

• We're hoping the Radeon VII will kick off a new line of AMD graphics cards too

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