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Love it. Looks like INTC won the Centrino battle and is losing the China war.
'The Chinese in general have been pretty rebellious of the hegemony of the Western technology oligarchy," said Roger Kay, an analyst at IDC. AMD "doesn't represents the incumbent."'
AMD used to average over 10m shares a day.
yah, what's needed is strong buying volume. As long as there aren't any committed buyers the stock is susceptible to the sort of manipulation we're seeing.
This is typical of turn-around stocks going through transition. People get this opinion about a stock, based on past performance, and anything less than a 2X4 to the head won't change their opinions. Buying a turn-around stock just before it turns is a great way to make lots of money, but it takes a certain sort of investor to handle the chaos that usually surrounds such events.
Your right, earnings will tell the tale.
Yah, there are a lot of CVB holders that are just interested in cutting coupons and missed the AMD appreciation by going short. I don't want to look it up, but those guys probably represent about 20m of the shorted shares. That still leaves 33m or so unaccounted for.
What I think is happening is that 1 or 2 of the major shorts are doubling down in a desperate attempt to get back to even. That will only happen if current AMD stockholder sell to these guys. Given that AMD stockholders have had at least six months of wandering in the price desert to sell their shares at current prices, I suspect that not much selling will occur until we get above $17.
What I think is more likely is that before the shorts can cover, at current prices, other big boys will start to see what's happening. Even as a short-term play AMD seems worth buying given the exposure of the shorts.
If I had to guess whose behind all this I would say Bear Sterns. They have tried this before with good success. Maybe we’ll eventually find out, but I doubt it.
I don't think AMD is quite as constrained as some think, and in another month or so 90nm processors will start appearing which should help a lot.
Anyway, given Bob Rivets comments about taking market share along with all the product and sale wins we've been hearing about for the last 6 months, it's almost inconceivable that AMD could have anything but a great q2.
Combine this with a rather subdued performance projected by INTC in what almost everyone has been saying is a boom quarter for processors and it doesn't take too much in the way of math skills to see where things must be going for AMD.
And that's not even taking into consideration flash which probably is going to do better than CPG. God I love it when a plan comes together.
The shorts are dead meat; they just don't realize it yet. The buzzards are circling.
Interesting day
Kind of reminds me of Custers last stand. Looks like a last ditch attempt by some big money on the wrong side of the river to attempt to stem the tide of indians looking for scalps.
It's really kind of pathetic to see good money being thrown after bad, but I'm sure the throwers have plenty. We may lose the battle today, but there's less and less doubt about how the war will go.
"Why Tivo when you can Freevo?"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=1&u=/nm/20040608/tc_nm/column_plug...
I don't think Bob has any illusions about AMD's capacity and its' ability to compete forcefully in every strata. The point I think he was making is that AMD has product in every category and just having product is enough to keep the "Big Dog" from raising prices to make up for lower ASPs in markets it isn't competitive in.
Never is a real long time, and things have been known to change in much shorter time frames. A 300mm fab producing 5k WSPW is going to be able to provide enough chips that the "Big Dog" is going to have to change the way it does business, especially if AMD retains its' current technology advantages.
From an AMD point of view an interesting question might be how AMD will ramp up fab30 with destroying processor pricing? The answer, it appears, is that AMD is going to be relying on the low cost Geode processor and massively expanding world demand for internet access to sop up the extra capacity. This could really be interesting.
I wonder what INTC has in mind for their much larger capacity issues?
On Smith Barney conference
The thing I found most interesting was the question, after the presentation, asking about how well the quarter was going for PC's. Bob said the while sales were tracking normally AMD was taking market share from the "big dog". He also pointed out something we have talked about over and over. That being the need to AMD to not be a one trick pony and how AMD now competes in every sector so that the "big dog" can't shift pricing. He also talked about ASP's increasing for 4 quarters in a row now, which bodes well for the quarter.
All in all pretty much what I expected. Flash seems extremely strong, but we should also see very good gains from processors. $.20 still seems to be obtainable.
3G problems
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=2&u=/nm/20040603/tc_nm/tech_wirele...
Me...
The day of internet access, for the masses, on cell phone/WiFi, handhelds/laptops is still a long ways off. 3G seems to be the latest bust in a never ending search for the holy grail of technologies.
In densely populated areas 31 miles just won't work. For it to work the service will have to be based on the number of users in a given area. Of course the greater the number of transmitters the greater cost, and then there's the matter of the decoder thingy everyone will have to buy. The guys that build the towers and install the transmitters/receivers aren't going to be doing this so that anyone with a WiFi connection can tap into their service.
There are trade-offs, and WiFi isn't developed enough yet to say how well it will work on a large scale. Personally, I look forward to anything that increases competition, but bandwidth is going to be at a premium just for the things already envisioned for the cell phone/WiFi world of the near future.
Just think about how often you can't use your cell phone now because the channels are busy. Then think about a very data enriched, internet accessed world of mobile users, let alone hordes of fixed users.
yah, I read your reply after I posted and thought to myself, he just said the same thing I did. I won't get into that old cliche about great minds, there are too many other great minds on this board.
What has me worried about WiFi is bandwidth saturation. I think we will be using all the bandwidth just doing things like downloading our EMail to our "universal communicators". Imagine vacationers sending home pictures from their "universal communicators" as an example of things that could eat up MBs. I know that new transmission schemes allow closer bandwidth and better compression techniques will help, but there is a limit as to how much data can be handled. This is also dependent on how close the transmitters are together and the number of receiving/sending units there are in the area.
Fiber installations are now quite competitive with twisted pair installations, being only about 10% more expensive for new work. Because fiber can handle many light frequencies at the same time and because compression techniques are constantly being improved, huge amounts of data can be transmitted, think HDTV.
I think the article about Verizon was referring to FTTC and the $30B investment they were going to be making over the next ten years. I think all the Baby Bells realize the DSL, over twisted pairs, isn’t going to cut it due to the line length restrictions et al.
In my ideal world everything would be fiber, where large data amounts are involved, and everyone would carry a "universal communicator" that would keep them in contact with the world wirelessly.
In my world fiber would connect to the "PC in a closet" and all of the functions of the "PC in a closet" could be controlled with the "universal communicator" through a combination of voice and multi-use controls.
I know I'm just dreaming, but progress is being made on a number of fronts.
A deal with Dell would be worth $10 the day of announcement, but the reality seems to be that Dell will take a lot more time before entering AMD's universe.
Meanwhile, I've been wanting AMD to get together with SNE mainly because of the "PC in a closet" thing. While user friendliness appears to be the main stumbling block in getting PC's and home entertainment equipment merged there are many baby steps that could be taken, and need to be taken now, to get us going down that road.
It's no secret that SNE needs another Walkman. Financially, SNE, while not a basket case, has certainly not been a market darling for quite a while. Right now SNE seems to be concentrating its' resources on Playstation and HDTV. While this is probably a good short-term direction, longer term they need solutions that can reduce the technical complexity users now face. Technical complexity is not going to diminish, as users want more and more functionality built into the devices they buy. To me this means that the devices must become smarter in order to hide the increased complexity, and to me that means smarter processors and software.
My feelings are that over the next few years the tasks processors are asked to do will shift from number crunching to much more mundane things like finding and playing all of Nora Jones songs through selected speakers in the house while junior plays some game on the internet with 4 of his buddies, while daughter watches a DVD movie that was recorded off the air a month ago. These things while sounding simple are really complex, especially if you make them simple for the user to do.
A lot of this is software, but there's a lot of hardware involved in getting disparate devices to talk to each other. And then some device is going to have to be boss. This is where the "PC in a closet" comes in. AMD has the smarts, and SNE has the consumer hardware, now who is going to come up with the software, and when?
yah, I've wanted AMD and SONY to get together for years. It's about time.
A little dated, but still relevant
http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/040514/b3884113mz063_1.html
Television is only part of the strategy. The new fiber-optic lines also will allow Verizon to offer the most advanced consumer broadband service the U.S. has ever seen. Internet connections of up to 30 megabits per second, more than 10 times faster than a state-of-the-art cable modem or digital subscriber line (DSL), will be possible, Verizon executives say. Five- and 15-megabit versions will be available for customers who don't require all that juice. Although specific pricing hasn't been decided, the 5-meg version will be competitive with cable modem service, which typically costs $40 to $45 a month. Eventually, if there's demand for it, Verizon intends to offer consumers Net connections of 100 megs or more.
The geode seems to be going where I thought the Alchemy chips were going to go. The geode does seem to be a better solution given the strong indications given by Hector that the world according to AMD is going to be X86, or more specifically, AMD64 based. Tablet PC's with Geode chips would seem be ideal for markets from third world PC's to the universal communicator that's already evolving out of the wireless and cell phone markets.
Seems like every day I'm more and more impressed by AMD's management and the decisions their making. The furtive moves into the home entertainment/Media PC markets being another move I heartily endorse.
Comparing AMD's management and INTC's is an exercise in contrasts, to say the least. It's amazing how much Hector and the AMD management team have accomplished considering what they were up against. Of course they have had a lot of help from INTC's version of the Keystone Kops, Barrett/Otellini. Things should have been a lot tougher than they have been, but thanks to the AMD open door policy at INTC, AMD seems to be sliding right into a competitive position most people never imagined possible.
Yah, that's the trouble with a cyclical business, everyone is always trying to time the cycle. Combine that with AMD's spotted history and a lot of people tend to shoot first and think later when it comes to AMD.
I know it’s a cliche but things really are different now. No way is flash, either NAND, or NOR, the product it was even a couple of years ago. Application growth has been exponential for both products, but AMD seems to have a secured a lock on the NOR markets with Mirrored flash. I'm not worried about INTC in the flash area as their Strata flash seems to be more difficult to make and doesn't have the margins Mirrored flash has. As far as I can tell this isn't going to change any time soon so AMD should continue to take market share with increasing profit margins. Further, mirrored flash may turn out to be a viable solution for some products that now use NAND which would be icing on the cake. Making NAND flash products that compete with Mirrored flash seems more problematic as it involves packaging various flavors of Dram, Sram and NAND together in one package. In a lot of cases NOR can do everything NAND does, with certain trade-offs, one of the biggest being cost. At least that's my understanding. Mirror bit, especially if they can get MLC working, should be a very competitive flash product even blurring the NAND/NOR boundaries to some extent.
Yah, that's about what I think. Shouldn't be much resistance up to the mid $16 range since we've been through that territory so many times, but after that things will probably slow with another run at $17.50 as we approach earnings. SOXX is doing nicely so it's hard to say what the driver is in this, but INTC is lagging in the normal 2 to 1 ratio to AMD so AMD relative strength seems to be continuing.
Everything I've been seeing seems to indicate that the demand problems the A64's were having has been reversed. In fact demand seems so strong across all processor products that AMD may need 90nm just to keep up with demand by q3? On the server front, this quarter should be a pretty good litmus test of demand as a lot of things will have fallen into place that were not there in q1. 45k to 50k systems, according to Gartner's way of calculating, would be a strong showing for q2. If flash does as well as I expect q2, AMD could surprise a lot more people than just the analysts.
Well that's a first. I post about the possibliity of the market taking a bounce up and it does so. Maybe I'll try it again next week?
Given the miserable volume and the unusually large number of shares shorted compounded by a long weekend, we may be seeing a reversal of the usual Friday sell off before a 3 dayer. Under the low volume conditions it wouldn't take many shorts covering to cause a rise in AMD's price.
Another thing is that AMD has been range bound since last November. There have been ample times for those disinclined to hold AMD during the volatility to get rid of their stock. What we now have are probably a core of investors that are not affected by the volatility and whose selling price is higher than the range.
No sellers and a lot of shorts shiting in their pants as AMD’s price slowly moves up is a good reason for AMD to take a nice jump.
In looking at these server numbers one has to remember that they are heavily back-end weighted. By that I mean that if you were to get all the news releases concerning sales, e.g. tier1, tier2, all channels etc. and put them all together in chronological sequence you would see a snowball building in which actual sales lag by a quarter or more the product announcements. The important thing here is the constant drumbeat of announcements by new adopters and new product streams by existing Opteron sellers we have seen since the Opteron introduction in April of 93.
On the purchaser side of things there has undoubtedly been a long period of tire kicking. As the Opterons have proved themselves and the drumbeat of positive media articles increased, the acceptance of the Opterons has started to take off. We're fast getting to the point where a continuation of the sales growth exhibited so far is going to translate into very big numbers, for AMD anyway.
One other thing. Red Storm is scheduled for completion in H204. I'm sure they have purchased some Opterons to prove the concept, but given the nature or processors, more for less over time, it's unlikely that they have purchased the bulk of the chips yet. Given that the architecture doesn't require the same chips within the entire super computer it makes sense that they would wait until everything else was working before committing to the chips.
Your numbers look very reasonable.
Up is definitely better than down. Nice to see your back.
Yah, it looks like this dog is finally getting ready to howl. We may have just seen our last buying opportunity for awhile, hopefully.
Picked up a few more shares at $14.01. These are supposed to be trading shares, but I think I'll probably let them ride along for awhile.
Still looking for a minimum of $.20 in earnings this q with every q getting better through 05. That $.20 along with a 64 bit buzz that's getting deafening should get AMD over $20 by the end of q3 if MSFT performs its’ part.
Happy days are here again. Let’s just hope the macro markets cooperates.
OT, Personally, while English may be the root of many problems I think the health problem is caused by Americans spending too much time on their asses and not enough on their feet.
Looks like I should have bought more at $13.80? Oh well, like taxes and death, you can bet there will be further "AMD buying opportunities. Think I'll wait a little longer to see if this mover is renting or buying before I commit more funds.
Very interesting. The difference in shares doesn't seem to be a time related reporting issue, so who knows what's right? If true, it shows a definite trend towards further concentration in AMD ownership.
Actually, the investment community is probably, like this board, divided into believers and heathens. So without direct evidence one way or another one would expect that the believers would continue to accumulate on these "buying opportunities" and the agnostics/atheists will dump based on other issues.
OT - Root and Rout do have quite a few meanings, not to mention route and router. You have to love English with its myriad meanings for the same spelling of a word, or worse words that sound the same as in to, two, too. It's truly amazing the number of rules, (spelling, grammar, word meaning) one has to know just to communicate. It seems like there should be an easier way, but replacing English with something else would be like Itanium trying to replace X86. Just too much of an established base to fight.
I read awhile ago that once the written word was introduced the speed that changes were introduced to the language slowed down enormously. I'm no linguist, but to me the language is a mess with too many exceptions and incomprehensible rules. Still it does seem to work, sort of.
That's kind of my take on the Paris chips also. If MSFT is going to be driving everything to 64 bits by the end of 05 why would anyone want to buy a 32-bit chip now? Further, it's hard for me to believe that there are any cost savings with such a chip since everything I've read says it's going to be an A64 with 64 bit functionality turned off.
Sounds like the same cost with less functionality. Now that's a marketing idea that someone at INTC would have thought up.
Actually, all of us were rooting that you would get to the root of the matter, but you seem to be routing for some other information rooted in your obsequious rooting for INTC.
No doubt about it AMD is currently a much better managed company than INTC, they wouldn't have survived this long if they weren’t.
I'm betting, like everyone else, that the introduction of a 64bit MSFT OS and the successful transition to 90nm will increase demand for both Opterons and A64's, but to a much larger extent the A64's.
One thing I haven't quite figured out yet is how the 32 bit A64 variants are going to play in a 64-bit world. Undoubtedly these will be low-end chips, but given that these will be A64's with their nuts chopped off, how much of a cost advantage can they have? More importantly why would anyone want one?
AMD is going to have a lot of capacity coming on line between now and the end of the year. Capacity, for all the various chips, will probably be around 11M, so AMD is going to have to sell a lot more just to keep fab30 humming. If AMD can get anywhere near capacity utilization margins should increase markedly as most of every new $ will fall to the bottom line. Being in a high fixed cost business isn't bad when you're operating at, or near, max capacity.
The problem for AMD has been selling what it makes. I expect this has gotten better this quarter, I'm hoping a lot better. INTC really seems in a panic. My best guess is that's because AMD is finally doing some real damage, but who knows?
What your seeing is introductory pricing. Eventually Banias will become Dotham. It's time to milk the market with Dotham right now. That's what INTC does best, marketing.
AMD has been range bound for at least 6 months, what's it going to take to get AMD off the dime?
Well in the short term nothing will probably help. Perhaps some fab30, 90nm news might help, but we're probably doomed to follow the SOXX around like a baby duck following mom until earnings.
Earnings have to meet or beat market expectations for AMD to go up. Ok, that's pretty easy to say but just what are the markets expectations concerning AMD. Well, given the point that the semi-cycle is in (1/2 way?), the market is probably expecting the "old AMD" to be making at least $.20 to $.30 per share. As I've said before, this is because AMD has traditionally done very well during good times and fallen on its sword during bad.
Personally, I'm looking for an $.08 increase to $.20 due mostly to flash, but I'm not sure that will be enough for the market. One thing that might help is if AMD were to start taking market share from INTC. AMD desperately needs to start taking and additional 2%, or so, of market share ($'s more than units) every quarter. AMD has, by far, the strongest processor line up it has ever had right now. If AMD can't take processor market share now with a superior product that INTC doesn't have an answer for, the chances of it getting to the 25% to 30% needed for long term viability, aren't all that appealing.
It doesn't make any sense to talk about things getting better in q3 and q4 because INTC has to play under the same market conditions AMD has at all times. Granted there may be more revenue in the 3rd and 4th quarters to spread around, but the name of the game has always been AMD taking market share from INTC. Because computers are now a slow growth business, until AMD can prove it is a viable INTC competitor, by taking market share, there's going to be a lot of resistance to stock price gains. AMD might be able to make more money by being more efficient, but the true AMD price rewards will only come with increases in market share.
This quarter will say a lot about how the rest of the year is going to go. With the new matching products INTC has/will have, and the advertising $’s INTC will throw at the market, a lot to the uncontested advantages AMD has had will now be fought for tooth and nail. Similar or slightly better AMD products won’t cut it when matched up against the INTC marketing machine. Of course INTC could always do one of its patented roll over and play dead routines, but I doubt that’s going to happen now that INTC has seemingly regained its’ focus. Still, there’s always flash.
Agreed, it's an exercise in futility. I place limit orders and move on to other things, like a bottle of Pepcid-AC.
Ya, I look at those things, but basically I follow my finely tuned gut. After almost 1/2 century of playing the market it knows best. Most of what's going on in the market has nothing to do with AMD so looking at AMD specific things is an exercise in futility. Other than the new INTC products nothings changed except that the macro markets are in a dither.
I should have sold more a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I'm much better at buying than I am at selling. The 3k shares are just funny money to keep me from going bonkers while the market goes through its usual gyrations. The real trouble is that the 3k share buy is almost insignificant compared to my long holdings of AMD.
I really should be playing the market more than I have, it's been much more profitable than holding. The trouble is I have these Nice Guy tendencies and believe that any day now AMD will take off. I need to get another tint for my sunglasses, this Rose color is killing me.
Picked up 3k shares at $14.01.
Will be buying more if we get into the $13.80 area.
Seems like there's a lot of confusion out there, including the effect of rising interest rate on the macro economy and closer to home, how well the new INTC processors will be able to compete with AMD's offerings.
Although we've had a lot of reports about how semi inventories are growing and how great the 2nd half will be there does seem to be an underlying doubt about the viability, probably related to the macro economy thingy. The bouncing around of the SOXX seems to bear this out.
Combine this with the "Old AMD" reputation as a company that does well when times are good and downs a glass of Belladonna when the economy turn south and this break down of pricing is understandable if not appreciated. One thing to consider is that the fall has been done on relatively low volumes. This would seem to indicate that pricing is suffering from a lack of buyers and not from too many sellers.
As I said the other day I've got some money I set aside for another "AMD buying opportunity", but we've probably got a little more dropping to do before I'll commit. This is a traders market.
You don't have the massive changes going on at INTC without a corresponding management shake-up. While Barrett(Caesar) may not lie bleeding on the floor at the hand of Otellini(Brutus) it's probably a given that a coup de-tat took place and Barrets desk is now located next to the elevator. No doubt Barrett will be spending more time at his Montana ranch.
It remains to be seen whether Otellini can stop the ass-scratching, nose-picking, fumbling and bumbling that has been the hallmark of INTC over the last five years. With the one exception of the Itanium, it does look as if he has taken appropriate action so far. Itanium will probably remain sacrosanct due to its' high visibility, but there's little doubt that the direction of the product is now towards a merger with the Xeon in the hope of salvaging a product that can compete with Opteron. How well that will work is anyone’s guess.
To say that the P4 was a disaster is probably overstating the matter, but without the P4/Itanic distractions, it's problematic as to whether AMD could have achieved all they did in the way of product penetration into markets previously owned by INTC. As to whether INTC's problems have given AMD enough headroom to take the requisite 25% to 30% of the market, needed to confirm long term viability, remains to be seen. It does look as if the football-sized gap INTC opened up could start to close again.