AMD's 4Q/FY19 Financial Report: Revenue up 50% from 4Q18, Debt Halved
by Dr. Ian Cutress on January 28, 2020 4:51 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- GPUs
- Financial Results
AMD Conference Call CFO Prepared Remarks
Following Dr. Su, AMD's CFO, Devinder Kumar, also had prepared remarks:
2019 was an outstanding year for AMD. Our competitive product portfolio and market share gains drove the highest annual and highest quarterly revenue in AMD history. We achieved our highest annual gross margin percentage and annual free cash flow since 2011. We improved non-GAAP earnings per share by 39% year-on-year. In short, we are very pleased with our financial performance.
Fourth quarter revenue was $2.13 billion up 50% from a year ago, and up 18% from the prior quarter driven by strong sales of Ryzen and EPYC processors, and Radeon on GPUs, partially offset by softer semi-custom sales. Gross Margin was 45%, up 360 basis points from a year ago, driven primarily by sales of our leadership 7nm products. Operating Expenses were $545 million, with increased investments in go-to-market activities and R&D, compared to $474 million a year ago. Operating Income was $405 million, up $296 million from a year ago, driven by revenue growth and higher gross margin. Operating margin was 19% as compared to 8% a year ago. That income was $383 million, up $296 million from a year ago. Diluted earnings per share were 32 cents per share, compared to eight cents per share a year ago.
Business Segment Results
The Computing and Graphics segment revenue was $1.66 billion, up 69% year over year, driven by Ryzen processor and Radeon gaming GPU sales growth. The Computing and Graphics segment operating income was $360 million or 22% of revenue, compared to $115 million a year ago, driven by higher revenue.
Enterprise Embedded and Semi-Custom (EESC) segment revenue was $465 million, up 7% from $433 million the prior year. The continued growth of EPYC processes was partially offset by softer semi-custom revenue. EPYC processor revenue grew by a strong double digit percentage sequentially driven by robust shipments of our second generation EPYC processors. EESC segment operating income was $45 million, or 10% of revenue, driven by EPYC process sales, compared to an operating loss of $6 million a year ago.
During the quarter, we reduced gross debt by $524 million, which resulted in a GAAP loss of $128 million. These debt reductions result in an annualized interest expense saving of approximately $16 million. Free cash flow was positive $400 million in the fourth quarter, and cash flow from operation was $442 million. Inventory was $1 billion down 6% from the prior quarter. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $469 million compared to $152 million a year ago, driven by higher quarterly earnings.
Full Year Results
2019 revenue was $6.73 billion, up 4% YoY driven by strong growth in Computing and Graphics segment and sales of second generation EPYC processors, partially offset by a decline in semi-custom sales. Excluding semi-custom, revenue was up more than 20% year over year. Gross Margin of 43% was up 420 basis points from the prior year, driven by our current generation of Ryzen and EPYC products. Operating expenses were 31% of revenue, as we increase go-to-market activities and investments in R&D. 2019 operating income was up 33% from a year ago to $840 million, or 12% of revenue. Net income was $756 million, up 47% from the prior year.
Turning to the balance sheet, I'm extremely pleased with our progress on the strengthening balance sheet. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities total $1.5 billion at year end, while gross debt was $563 million. This represents our highest net cash position since the third quarter of 2006. Full year free cash flow was $276 million. We reduced principal debt by almost $1 billion in 2019, and ended the year with less than $600 million of gross debt. On a trailing 12 month basis, adjusted EBITDA was $1.1 billion, resulting in gross leverage of 0.5x, down from 1.9x at the end of 2018.
Outlook for 1Q 2020
We expect revenue to be approximately $1.8 billion, plus or minus $50 million, an increase of approximately 42% year over year, and a decrease of approximately 15% sequentially. The year over year increase expected to be driven by strong growth in Ryzen, EPYC, and Radeon product sales. The sequential decrease is driven primarily by negligible semi-custom revenue, which continues to soften in advance of the ramp of next generation products, in addition to seasonality.
In addition, for Q1 2020, we expect non-GAAP gross margin to be approximately 46%. [We expect] Non-GAAP operating expenses to be approximately $580 million, non-GAAP interest, expense, taxes, and other to be approximately $18 million, and the first quarter diluted share count is expected to be approximately 1.22 billion shares.
Outlook for FY2020
For the full year 2020, we expect revenue growth of approximately 28 to 30%, driven by strength across all businesses. We expect non-GAAP gross margin, to be approximately 45%, non-GAAP operating expenses to be approximately 28% of revenue, and a non-GAAP tax rate of approximately 3% of pre-tax income.
In closing, we had an excellent fourth quarter, and an excellent 2019. Our full year financial results highlight the strength of our business model. I look forward to what we have in store for 2020 as we expect to further expand and ramp our leadership portfolio of high performance products to drive revenue growth, gross margin expansion, market share gains and financial momentum.
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alufan - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
if your old enough to remember AMDs 64 bit chips wiped the floor with Intel for a while and they got very rich very quick and like Intel at the moment probably had a few years of complacency, Intel brought out core2duo and it literally put AMD in the doldrums for a good 10 years and with the added efforts of ATI which they bought meant cuts, nil budgets etc to the point they bled cash for years, but remember they were cash rich FABs etc just like Intel, this Ryzen generational step may well be the equivalent blow to Intel from AMD but I doubt it Intel is more diverse, it will however have a significant effect in the next year or so especially when the Commercial markets start to move over which they will.supdawgwtfd - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Intel got into big trouble during that time for screwing AMD over too don't forget.AMD did not in fact make as much money as they should of.
Spunjji - Thursday, January 30, 2020 - link
When was that ever in doubt? :)Vesperan - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
"Yes. In 2019, we launched our new architecture in GPUs, it's the RDNA architecture, and that was the Navi based products. You should expect that those will be refreshed in 2020 - and we'll have a next generation RDNA architecture that will be part of our 2020 lineup"So - expect the 5500/5600/5700's to become a rebadged 6500/6600/6700's - with a RDNA2 Radeon RX 6900 XT on top?
I love AMD, but Polaris was used for a long while - so can we assume the current Navi chips will be too?
Spunjji - Thursday, January 30, 2020 - link
That's what I took from it. I don't think AMD's current chip design strategies can facilitate top-to-bottom product refreshes anymore. It'll be interesting to see whether that changes as their financial situation improves.ksec - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
This is a much better Report than the usual one from Anandtech, I was wondering. Turns out it was Dr. Ian doing the wonderful work!On the report itself. I am not happy with this performance. But this also shows how small is the "prosumer market ". Most of it are now in Server, Notebook, And Business Desktop. All of these are Long term contract and lock down as explained. But AMD are not hammering hard enough. On the other hand I think as much as I hate Intel they are defending those ties pretty damn well.
TheJian - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
I believe the highest quarter on record for margin was 56.8 or 58.6%. IIRC it's either 2001 or 2005/2006. They made about a billion that year.AMD made about a billion NET that year IIRC. That was back when they knew how to PRICE a winner. Currently the company is run by idiots that do not know how to take advantage of winning products, no competition, less watts/heat. Pricing at anything more than 10% discount is retarded (you are winning for crying out loud) and even pricing at exactly the price of the other guy is questionable when they other guy is facing shortages and fab problems.
As a stock I just dumped ALL AMD, as it is priced for perfection, which currently would be somewhere between 1.2-1.6B. That is NET INCOME for the Q, not revenue! So yeah, SELL. I did Friday...LOL. Predicting a wishy washy year is also down to BAD MANAGEMENT. You priced your entire year for failure and well, you have it. We should be seeing 1B net income Q's every Q with 15% more silicon (heck should see that TODAY and 2B net income Q's if that 15% is really going to double AMD's silicon at tsmc). They booked the entire extra 30,000 wafers per month TSMC will have supposedly. Currently 110K wafers and AMD is 4th out of top 5 customers. I can't see how AMD would be over 30K already (not with apple, HS, and Qcom in front of them), so that should mean doubling (more actually by far at TSMC it seems) of AMD's silicon pool from TSMC right? No too much coming from GF these days, so that should allow AMD to double revenue (easily) if you are using that silicon to attack HIGHER margin stuff and pricing them correctly to begin with.
AMD will get punished for this Q as they should, and for bad year predictions. You should be predicting double revenue by xmas 2020 or you are just stupid with pricing. That is why analysts are pissed. How can you NOT guide UP massively with an intel shortage and products that anyone with a brain wants vs. Intel, and no end in sight for the fab lead for AMD now. TSMC 5nm is on track (better than 7nm track), so nothing will change for Intel until tsmc 3nm maybe. Someone please explain why they are NOT making 1B a quarter with all this data? You are dumb AMD.
"DK: I don't think I've actually said that - I said some of our graphics products are below corporate average from a gross margin standpoint, in addition to the semi-custom have been below average."
You're fired.
"As it relates to the pricing environment, we're expecting a competitive pricing environment, and that's the way we built our model. We've always expected that the competition will be very aggressive on both the CPU as well as the GPU side - that is part of the inherent model or for the company."
LOL, you're fired. YOU made the price environment suck by starting a war that caused both Intel and NVDA to drop pricing immediately, instead of higher pricing that would have caused them to sit and wait to see how many you would take in sales, THEN respond with price cuts IF NEEDED. YOU, however, chose to price so low EVERYONE had to CUT in most cases even before you launched! That is Fing stupid on it's own, never mind doing it in a shortage of silicon...holy cow you are dumb! YOU ARE FIRED. I couldn't fire you so I fired your stock. I could point out even more stupid comments and excuses (silicon going to barely double digit margin products, fing stupid if that silicon could sell in a 1000% margin server chip!) but nobody at AMD is listening anyway. Avoid the stock until they pull their head out of their butts and price what the market will BEAR, not their dumb models. Jeez, did they hire climate change people to predict pricing? We know they can't predict today's weather, let alone 10-50yrs from now...LOL. Do I sound angry? HEH. Yeah, I'd like AMD to act like a real company that is working for shareholders. Heck, I'd be ok with simply RATIONAL pricing in this market. But you went freaking stupid with pricing. Servers same story (even worse). Intel was expected to slap a 25-50K price on 56c. I expect under 10k now that you price your FASTER chip with LESS watts at 7K...YOU ARE FIRED. That should be 50K until Intel gets their 56 core out the door in QUANTITY. IF they priced it at 50K I wouldn't have dropped my price a dime from 50K until you did! What part of making money do you guys NOT GET? IDIOTS.
Intel set a record because they moved all available silicon they could sell to SERVER and HEDT. This is the RATIONAL way to operate if SHORT on your products. Apologize to customers but do what SAVES YOU, just like Intel did. AMD needs to stop acting like a homeless beggar, and start pricing like a winner.
It is comic they just had their HIGHEST revenue on record for a Q, yet they made more for the year with basically 1/2 this revenue for the year a decade ago...LOL. Intel pulling 20B net income from 80% of the market on 70B revenue TTM. AMD, 6B revenue but only 209m NET INCOME TTM. Can anyone see the problem here? The person asking questions is right, why are you not in the 50%+ margins (and I think he means 55% not 50! INtel/NVDA at 64%)? Heck dump consoles and we should be asking why are you not in the 60% range! You are BARELY breaking even on the best products you've had since well over a decade ago when you charged rational pricing with 50%+ margins and REAL net income. Last 3yrs, 4B revenue, 5B, now 6B. WOW, that's awesome, oh wait...Profits for that extra 2B revenue grew NONE. Uhh, YOU ARE FIRED. For the love of god AMD, FIRE someone! YOU are your own enemy. Nobody at Intel or NV wants to lower pricing, they constantly try to hike a new product on TOP of old. YOU SHOULD TOO if at all possible (and it is POSSIBLE in a shortage!). IDIOTS. I could go on for days on AMD stupidity, but I have to find a new stock to buy now...LOL. Good luck if you didn't sell last week.
eva02langley - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Is that a joke? At this moment, there is rumor of Intel at TSMC and global foundries. AMD just consolidated their business for good. They are not going anywhere and the stock IS NOT collapsing and it's back at 47$ proving the valuation was quite close to the actual stock price.By the way I bought at 11$, so go cry me a river.
Carmen00 - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Impressive. To summarise: you rage-quit on AMD stock, which you agree is going to go up, because you object to them not price-gouging when they had the chance? Yes, it seems like you've reached the pinnacle of rationality. Congratulations.Now if you don't mind, I'm going to return to financially backing the company that seems to be performing quite well without bending its customers over. Y'know, building up good-will and reputation and all those other things that don't appear on a balance sheet, but are sometimes considered to be useful to think about.
haghands - Thursday, January 30, 2020 - link
It's so tight to see this weirdos completely naked rage at AMD for NOT viciously raping their customer. My man is straight up giving the pursuit of wealth a horrifically bad name lol. Holy hell I hope he never gets hold of any kind of meaningful power, even if its just, like, being a fast food manager.