AMD Meets Wall Street Expectations

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices barely eclipsed Wall Street revenue expectations in the second quarter, and met expectations for its profit, with the company reporting sales of its 64-bit processors remaining brisk.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company reported earnings of 9 cents per share, in line with the consensus estimates compiled by Thomson/First Call. AMD posted revenue of $1.26 billion, which beat the $1.24 billion analysts had expected. That compares with a loss of 40 cents per share on $645 million in sales for the same period a year earlier.

In a prepared statement, AMD's CFO Robert Rivet said the company reported strong growth in sales of flash memory, and "accelerating AMD Opteron and Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor sales contributed to a double-digit operating margin for our microprocessor business."

AMD's results, the second straight quarter the company beat Wall Street expectations, came a day after rival Intel posted results slightly below analysts expectations for its second-quarter revenue and warned that its profit margin in the next quarter would be less than first thought.

Looking ahead, AMD suggested it would still see growth, but hedged on how much."Economic and industry conditions remain uncertain and continue to make it difficult to forecast product demand," the company said. "In the third quarter of 2004, AMD expects sales to increase in each of its two major businesses and total sales to increase moderately."

AMD executives were scheduled to provide more detail on its performance and outlook in a late-day conference call with analysts.