Intel Corp (INTC)

[Golfbum]

My AMD prediction:

I think in 2H2015 they will further wind down their consumer and even corp client efforts meaning no more "biggish" cores for servers or clients and just try to make modest improvements on APUs on small cores and sell them where they can. They will continue to fare poorly in this effort due to Intel fighting ARM. Expect fewer direct headcount and more emphasis on disti served customers especially on in emerging markets. "AMD direct sales reps" to OEMs serving the client market will become largely extinct as has their server efforts already. This will be the brunt of the next round of personnel cuts both in sales and marketing as well as engineering.

They will sell off or license their x86 dense server line end products to someone (to raise cash) as they increasingly find it impossible to stay competitive against Intel based OEMs while remaining an Intel customer for the essentials inside their own products. They will likely continue to pursue their x86/ARM dense server line chips but in competition with too many of the ARMy camp chasing a too small market to ever make it profitable while OEMs selling Intel x86-based products compete in the same space.

They will continue minor incremental spins of x86 small cores to improve power efficiency and interfaces to make them easier to use in SOC and embedded designs particularly where compatibility with similar interfaces on ARM can be made. This is "B-team" stuff, and a much smaller B-team at that.

They will compete with NVidia as a licensor of graphics IP to others and as yet another ARM/graphics chip vendor.

They will continue to sell dGPU in competition with NVidia but both will find it difficult to deal with Intel's iGPU in clients and Intel's HPC chips. It will be difficult to determine AMD's profitability of those standalone products until they realign that reporting segment. Expect another reporting segment realignment in 1H2016.

They will continue to sell their x86 small cores as SOC ingredients for custom and embedded designs. I expect Atom SOCs to make this difficult for profitability.

They will be a lot smaller financially and their 2.2B debt will loom a lot larger. Expect a lot of bondholders to bail on their holdings during 2015 at well below par. They will announce a new acceptable minimum cash threshold well below their current $1B to $600M window which they plan to meet by these major cuts.

Note that selling portions of the company in whole or in part thru licensing is likely the only way to raise cash since floating more bonds won't be possible. Slashing budgets is the only other way to slow the bleeding.

gb