Advanced Micro Devices this week reported a wider loss for the quarter compared to last year as it tries to recover from the recession.
The company reported a net loss of US$416 million, or US$0.66 per share, for the first quarter of 2009, compared to a loss of US$364 million in the first quarter of 2008. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted a net loss of US$439.2 million.
The loss includes charges related to AMD’s spinning off of its manufacturing assets into a separate company.
AMD also reported revenue of SU$1.18 billion in the first quarter ending on March 28, a 21 per cent fall compared to the first quarter of 2008 and flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2008.
During the quarter, AMD closed a deal to spin off its manufacturing assets to a separate company called GlobalFoundries, a move that unloaded close to US$1.1 billion in debt off AMD’s books. GlobalFoundries is a joint venture with investment firm Advanced Technology Investment Company, which is owned by the Abu Dhabi government.
AMD has recorded consecutive quarterly losses for more than two fiscal years now, but the company’s CEO, Dirk Meyer, said it had launched new products during the quarter and cut costs in an effort to deal with the negative effects of the recession.
Though microprocessor revenue grew sequentially during the first quarter, it fell year-over-year, though AMD did not provide exact numbers.
The global economic contraction continued in the first quarter, and future quarters look “murky at best,” Meyer said during a conference call. Consumers have become more discerning about purchases, making it hard to predict shipments or microprocessor revenue. Typically, there is a seasonal decline in chip purchases during the second quarter.
But there are signs that user demand for PCs stabilized during the quarter, said Bob Rivet, AMD’s chief operations and administrative officer, during the call. AMD’s desktop inventory was not excessive and cleared out faster than the laptop inventory, which saw a larger backlog of chips that took longer to clear.
