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发表于 2008-5-5 13:30:04
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Sunnyvale(CA) - For the past several weeks, both CharlieDemerjian from TheInquirer and yours truly have been criticized by someof our colleaguesand AMD's own PR department about the number of peoplewe were told byindustry sources that AMD is going to let go. At the endof the day,our sources were spot-on with the expectation of imminentstaff cuts,but, as it turns out, the estimates of how many people willhave toleave were too conservative.
Our sources called fora 5%reduction in positions, or about 850 employees. We have noindicationto believe that this information was wrong at the time wepublished ourarticle, but now we hear that AMD may have increased thatnumber to 10%or about 1600 to 1700 positions.
On a percentage basis, this number is still below what Intel announced to cut as part of its massive restructuring that began in 2006. Including sold departments, Intel so far has eliminated more than 16,000 people from its payroll (which is, by the way, also close to our initial prediction and more than 50% above Intel’s original guidance).Accordingto its annual report, Intel employed about 86,300 people atthe end ofDecember 2007, down from about 102,500 18 months earlier.
AMDalsoannounced that it expects Q1 2008 revenue to be about $1.5billion, up22% from Q1 2007, but down 15% from Q4 2007. A decline isto be expectedbecause of the seasonal pattern, but 15% is probablymuch more than mostfinancial analysts would have expected. AMD saidthat the steep declineis due to “lower than expected sales across allbusiness segments.” Aloss for the quarter now appears to be all butcertain and the questionwill be how high this loss will be. Based onits 2007 cost structure andthe product and financial informationprovided by the company last year,we estimated in October 2007 that AMD would have to post sales of about $2 billion per quarter to deliver a profit.
Halfayear later, we know that AMD has slashed costs, but we alsoheardindustry sources and Intel claiming that Intel’s Xeon MP(Tigerton)processor has taken away market share from AMD’s cash cow,the 4-wayand 8-way Opteron processor. Depending on much market shareAMD haslost, the company may not see much opportunity to beautify itsbalancesheet. In the end, $1.5 billion in revenues and the thin profitmarginsin its current microprocessor business, combined with ATI’sstrugglesagainst Nvidia, could mean that AMD has not made much progressat allthis year.
AMD expects to have the cuts done by Q3 2008 and Q3 appears to become a key quarter for the company. AMD promised that it will return to profitability by end of 2008,andit seems that executives are doing their best to achieve that -bycutting the workforce. The official financial results will bereleasedon April 17 during a quarterly conference call with analysts.
We still wonder when AMD executives will officially announce their “Asset Lite” strategy, or "Advanced Micro Devices" and "Arab Micro Devices",asrecently outlined by the Inquirer. The State of New Yorkwoulddefinitely like to learn about that part of Hector Ruiz’ strategy.Itwould be interesting how shareholders will react totheseannouncements, since certain company executives have paidthemselvesstock bonuses (in 2007) that, in aggregate, would cover thesalaries ofthousands of employees. We doubt that will help AMD’s cause.
Ifyou want to have fanatical followers inside the company, AMDshouldresearch what Jen-Hsun Huang did in the GeForce FX days, and whatSteveJobs did when he returned to Apple.
[ 本帖最后由 jingli888ca 于 2008-5-5 13:33 编辑 ] |
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发表于 2008-5-4 22:59:14
