AMD sees big sales growth and expects 50% more sales this year

AMD's published its first-quarter earnings. The company recorded $3.45 billion in revenue, up 93 percent year-over-year. GAAP net income soared 243 percent year-over-year to $555 million driven by strong sales of CPUs and GPUs.

AMD still doesn't provide a lot of granularity with regards to its earnings, but the press release reveals the Computing and Graphics segment, which includes Ryzen processors and Radeon video cards, pulled in $2.10 billion in sales. That's 7 percent more than Q4 2020 and a 46 percent increase versus the year before. Sales of Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom chips did even better when you look at the year-on-year figures. With revenue of $1.35 billion, AMD saw a 286 percent year-over-year growth. Compared with last quarter, the sales of this segment were only 5 percent higher.

AMD's revenue was about $270 million higher than Wall Street consensus. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at 52 cents per share, a beat of roughly 8 cents. For the current quarter, AMD expects revenue of $3.6 billion, plus or minus $100 million. Quite a bit more than Wall Street estimates of $3.26 billion. AMD is also more optimistic about the full year 2021. Previously, the company anticipated annual growth of 37 percent. This has been revised to 50 percent growth.

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2021 of $3.45 billion, operating income of $662 million, net income of $555 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.45. On a non-GAAP* basis, operating income was $762 million, net income was $642 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.52.

“Our business continued to accelerate in the first quarter driven by the best product portfolio in our history, strong execution and robust market demand,” said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. “We had outstanding year-over-year revenue growth across all of our businesses and data center revenue more than doubled. Our increased full-year guidance highlights the strong growth we expect across our business based on increasing adoption of our high-performance computing products and expanding customer relationships.”

Q1 2021 Results

Revenue was $3.45 billion, up 93 percent year-over-year and 6 percent quarter-over-quarter driven by higher revenue in both the Computing and Graphics and Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-custom segments.

Gross margin was 46 percent, flat year-over-year and up 1 percentage point quarter-over-quarter. The quarter-over-quarter increase was driven by a greater mix of Ryzen™, Radeon™ and EPYC™ processor sales.

Operating income was $662 million compared to operating income of $177 million a year ago and $570 million in the prior quarter. Non-GAAP operating income was $762 million compared to operating income of $236 million a year ago and $663 million in the prior quarter. Operating income improvements were primarily driven by higher revenue.

Net income was $555 million compared to net income of $162 million a year ago and $1.78 billion in the prior quarter, which included an income tax benefit of $1.30 billion associated with a valuation allowance release. Non-GAAP net income was $642 million compared to net income of $222 million a year ago and $636 million in the prior quarter.

Diluted earnings per share was $0.45 compared to diluted earnings per share of $0.14 a year ago and $1.45 in the prior quarter, which included an income tax benefit that contributed $1.06 to earnings per share. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.52 based on a 15 percent effective tax rate compared to diluted earnings per share of $0.18 a year ago and $0.52 in the prior quarter. Prior periods had a 3 percent effective tax rate for non-GAAP results.

Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments were $3.12 billion at the end of the quarter.

-- AMD