AMD releases disastrous Q4 2014 earnings report

The last quarter of 2014 spelled financial disaster for AMD. After turning a small profit in 2013, the chip-maker recently reported a loss of 403 million US dollars for 2014, one mainly driven by poor performance during the fourth quarter of the year.

Mihai Andrici, Published 01/21/2015

Business

AMD is facing some financial turmoil: the chipmaker based in Sunnyvale, California recently announced its financial results for Q4 2014, and they're not pretty.

Although rivals from Intel reported strong sales in the Christmas quarter, it looks like AMD wasn't nearly as efficient. Forth quarter sales declined year-over-year to $1.24 billion in Q4 2014 from $1.59 billion in Q4 2013. AMD reported a net loss of 364 million dollars in Q4 2014, down from an 89 million profit in the same quarter of 2013.

As far as yearly results are concerned, AMD reported an increase in sales of nearly 4 percent during 2014, up to $5.51 billion from $5.30 billion during 2013. Despite this increase in total sales, AMD recorded a loss of 403 million dollars during 2014. A year before, the company turned a profit of 83 million dollars.

Unfortunately for AMD, it looks like all of its divisions are in trouble. The division responsible for PC processors and graphics chips declined by 16 percent during the year, while the division responsible with Enterprise, Embedded, and semi-custom SoCs declined 11 percent during 2014.

Apparently these disastrous financial results created a lot of unrest amongst the top management executives over at AMD. Back in October 2014, Dr Lisa Su replaced Rory Read as the CEO hoping to turn around the company. Other top executives such as John Byrne (General Manager at the Computing and Graphics Business Group), Colette LaForce (CMO) and Raj Naik (CSO) all recently left the company.