AMD makes profit again thanks to good sales of Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs
AMD made a profit in the past quarter. It is the first time in years that the manufacturer reports black numbers. Revenue from sales of CPUs and GPUs increased by 74 percent compared to the same quarter last year.
It is not known to what extent the sales of the new RX Vega GPUs influenced the figures. The release of those video cards was accompanied by low supply and high prices; presumably it is mainly the Ryzen CPUs that have caused the positive result. AMD places these together with GPUs in the Computing and Graphics segment and only publishes joint figures. The business unit had revenues of $819 million, up 74 percent from a year earlier.
According to AMD, the increase is both due to the good sales of Radeon GPUs and Ryzen CPUs. AMD reports that the average selling price of both CPUs and GPUs has risen sharply compared to last year. That’s no surprise, because AMD has a large range of high-end products since this year with its new Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs and its RX Vega GPUs. AMD video cards are also still in demand for mining cryptocurrency.
Revenue of the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom business unit, which includes Epyc server processors and custom socs for consoles, was virtually flat year on year. According to AMD, this is due to reduced demand for socs for consoles, but that was compensated with deliveries of Epyc CPUs and revenue from patents.
It is striking that AMD mentions in its presentation that Atari will use a custom processor with Radeon graphics in the upcoming console next year. The company made this known earlier, but the makers first want to raise money through crowdfunding to be able to bring the console to the market. The fact that Atari is mentioned in the numbers seems to indicate that a deal is already on the table.
AMD’s quarterly revenue came in at $1.64 billion, up 25 percent from a year earlier. The profit amounted to 71 million dollars, currently converted about 60.4 million euros. In the same quarter last year, AMD recorded a loss of $406 million. This large loss was mainly due to a large write-down related to a change in the agreement on the purchase of wafers with production partner GlobalFoundries.
AMD expects a 15 percent drop in revenue for the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter. AMD emphasizes that this is still a revenue increase of 26 percent compared to last year, and that the quarter also has a week less than then. The manufacturer attributes the decline to seasonal influences leading to lower semi-custom sales and a decline in demand for chips for mining cryptocurrencies.