Following the post-COVID weakening of the PC market, AMD has joined its peers in what can be best described as an industry-wide hangover in demand. Last month, NVIDIA reported its quarterly earnings in a staggered 2-step announcement leading to a massive sell-off in shares. AMD has decided to go with the same approach, releasing the preliminary results for its Q3 earnings and the full-fledged figures planned for November 22.
AMD hasn’t fared any better than its rivals, with a YoY drop of 40% in Q3 2023 across the client market. The client segment saw an even larger decline of 53% compared to the previous quarter. Datacenter performance was strong, growing by 45% YoY and 8% QoQ. The embedded segment did exceptionally well, gaining 1,549% over the previous year, while gaming was 29% higher. Overall, the chipmaker expects a growth of 29% in revenue in Q3 22, a sizable drop from the previously expected 55%. That’s a decrease of $1.1 billion in earnings in the third quarter, going from $6.7 (earlier) to $5.6 billion (expected now).
The client segment which forms the desktop and notebook CPU portfolio was affected the most, declining by 40% compared to the previous year and 53% over the last quarter. This can only mean that desktop Ryzen CPUs and mobile Ryzen APUs have been in weak demand but additional data is required for additional emphasis. I’d still bet on mobile being much stronger on average.
The PC market weakened significantly in the quarter. While our product portfolio remains very strong, macroeconomic conditions drove lower than expected PC demand and a significant inventory correction across the PC supply chain. As we navigate the current market conditions, we are pleased with the performance of our Data Center, Embedded, and Gaming segments and the strength of our diversified business model and balance sheet. We remain focused on delivering our leadership product roadmap and look forward to launching our next-generation 5nm data center and graphics products later this quarter.
Dr. Lisa Su, AMD CEO
Dr. Lisa Su reaffirmed that the chipmaker is on track to release its next-gen Radeon RX 7000 GPUs (starting with the RX 7900 XT) and MI300 accelerator later this quarter, possibly in December. The Epyc Genoa server CPUs featuring up to 96 Zen 4 cores across 5nm (TSMC N5) 12 CCDs will also be launched around the same time.
