AMD Q4 Results Beat Street, But Stock Down On Weak Outlook

(RTTNews) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter profit that rose from last year as revenues surged 50 percent and margins improved. Earnings for the quarter trumped Wall Street estimates by a penny, as did revenues.

However, the shares of the company slipped 4% in the after-hours trading on weak first-quarter outlook.

Sunnyvale, California-based AMD reported fourth-quarter profit of $170 million or $0.15 per share, compared to last year's profit of $38 million or $0.04 per share.

Excluding items, adjusted profit for the quarter was $383 million or $0.32 per share compared to a profit of $87 million or $0.08 per share a year ago. On average, 31 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated an earnings of $0.31 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

AMD's revenues for the quarter grew 50 percent to $2.13 billion from $1.42 billion a year ago. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $2.11 billion for the quarter.

AMD said revenue growth was driven largely by Computing and Graphics business segment.

Gross margin was 45 percent, up from 41 percent last year.

"2019 marked a significant milestone in our multi-year journey as we successfully launched and ramped the strongest product portfolio in our 50-year history," said CEO Lisa Su. "We delivered significant margin expansion and increased profitability as we gained market share with our Ryzen and EPYC processors. Our focused execution and the investments we made in our high-performance computing roadmaps position us well for continued growth in 2020 and beyond."

Looking forward to the first quarter, the company expects revenues to be about $1.80 billion, plus or minus $50 million. Analysts currently expect revenues of $1.86 billion.

For the full year 2020, AMD expects revenues growth of about 28 to 30 percent over 2019. Analysts currently expect revenue growth of 28 percent.

AMD closed Tuesday's trading at $50.53, up $1.27 or 2.58%, on the NYSE. The stock, however, slipped $2.16 or 4.27% in the after-hours trade.