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AMD loosing core execs

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MorgothPl

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A bit of shocking news from AMD. On same day quits not only Collette LaForce (whom AMD "poached" from Dell for large money) - chief of marketing, but also John Byrne, VP and general manager. Third to leave AMD is Chief Strategy Officer Raj Naik.

According to KitGuru, he either quit because he didn't agree with new marketing policy, or from family reasons. But, his leave will hurt AMD relations with electronics manufacturers. He was also championing shift from traditional CPUs and GPUs into modern solutions.

I wonder, what those changes mean, and does it mean that AMD will refocus its target on getting back into enthusiast desktop CPU?
 
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MorgothPl said:
I wonder, what those changes mean, and does it mean that AMD will refocus its target on getting back into enthusiast desktop CPU?
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Why would you ever think that it is related to each other. It is simple there is no money to be made until AMD has a product which comes close or beats certain aspects.

That leaves the budget APU for them to make money on. If there are certain things which need to be done to get back into the desktop cpu frame of things this should happen for AMD in 2016 and not sooner.

Nothing from AMD so far on which products we are going to see from them in 2016 so it might not be anything else then just another APU (X86).
 
With their push for HSA and other Software/driver solutions I highly doubt we will see Non-APU designs. Although ATHLON style (failed GPU on APU sales) will likely still exist.
 
chief of marketing - i never saw AMD doing any real marketing though beside and ad or 2 in a magazine maybe ....
 
Good. I would absolutely love to go back to an AMD cpu/board like the old days! I am an AMD person at heart, but been using Intel solutions for the last few years :eek:
 
At this point it'd be great for a [H] 1 on 1 interview with AMD's new CEO to get her vision without any speculation.
 
I'm encouraged by this, looks like cleaning up execs to me.
 
Shocked that John is leaving, he seemed like a top lad. Also lol at "possibly didn't agree with the new marketing strategy". What do they mean by "new"? Is that something we'll see soon? Because their marketing has been very bad these past few years.
 
When Intel just buys all the design wins what is there to market?
If you look at the videocards it is way better there but even when AMD has a clear lead it doesn't reflect in sales....
 
All the people who left were relatively new. 2 of them joined in 2012. Most of the remaining members have been on for quite a bit longer.

Perhaps these separations were the result of.. *ahem*.."job performance assessments?"
 
I'd like to know what that Marketing executive actually did to earn a fucking paycheck? Seriously...
 
The former AMD execs clearly didn't make enough under-the-table deals to secure AMD parts in OTS boxes.

Learn2Intel!
 
Probably completely unrelated to the fantastic (hope, hope) 4th quarter results coming out next week. ;)
 
AMD is a sinking ship, and with their "mobile market" and console "wins", they will be lucky to keep this going.
Their CPUs are lacking in performance, their GPUs are starting to falter, and it is just sad every way you look at it.
 
Looks like the new CEO is cleaning house...

I don't know why people get all worried when VPs /etc... leave.

I work at a fairly large company (could buy AMD), which is both a market leader and profitable and we change VPs more of then than AMD in our division alone.
 
Yeah, I see this more as cutting off the fat rather than abandoning ship. Let's hope the chef doesn't sour the steak.
 
More likely they saw they were wasting their time staying onboard and might as well pull the ripcord now. At that level you don't leave the company empty handed. They probably are getting 3 years separation salary, have tons of stock options still, etc etc.

I will be amazed if AMD is still around in 2017. 1/10th the revenue of Intel. 1/15th the cash on hand. 20x higher debt/equity. There's no financial indicators on AMD that point any way but towards their pending death. Texas Instruments is more profitable than AMD is ffs.
 
MrGuvernment said:
chief of marketing - i never saw AMD doing any real marketing though beside and ad or 2 in a magazine maybe ....
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Marketing is not the same thing as advertising. Advertising is one aspect of marketing.

Also advertising has moved well beyond the traditional avenues (eg. television, print or even web ads).

AMD's Game 24 event
AMD Red Team
Richard Huddy and Roy Taylor
Community Managers (eg. Warsam71)
Zen/K12 and Kim Driver
Omega Driver branding
Mantle
FreeySync
Console related branding
Gaming Evolved
Videocard reviews at GPU launch

These are all examples (and just a few) that have advertising (marketing) considerations.
 
Speaking about the results, newly minted AMD CEO Lisa Su explains, "Our Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment results were strong; however, performance in our Computing and Graphics segment was mixed based on challenging market conditions that require us to take further steps to evolve and strengthen the financial performance of this business."

At least AMD paid their bills this time around. That's a win in my book :D
 
The important thing here is, they kept King Roy! yea!!!

Also, its a smart move. AMD doesn't need marketing, they need better engineers.
 
AMD SERIOUSLY needs to focus on tightening their execs...ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
atp1916 said:
Speaking about the results, newly minted AMD CEO Lisa Su explains, "Our Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment results were strong; however, performance in our Computing and Graphics segment was mixed based on challenging market conditions that require us to take further steps to evolve and strengthen the financial performance of this business."

At least AMD paid their bills this time around. That's a win in my book :D
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That's Q3 results. Q4 reports on Jan 20th. I suspect for AMD they're going to be abysmal with the price slashing that happened from Nvidia's 900 series. What they've been doing a lot of recently is being "profitable" by having flat revenue and slashing r&d and engineering. Shortsided.

What's more dangerous for AMD's stock price is Intel reporting first (tomorrow). If Intel shines (which I'm positioned that they will), and AMD doesn't, their stock price is going to get wrecked.
 
You mean drop below the massive $2.63 that they've been hovering around for awhile now? :eek:
They actually started at 2.66 this morning.....
 
YourBreathStinks said:
You mean drop below the massive $2.63 that they've been hovering around for awhile now? :eek:
They actually started at 2.66 this morning.....
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I was there 2 years ago when they dropped sub $2. Except back then they had more assets than they do today. So $1.50 or something crazy low is definitely on the table still. Who knows though, no one serious invests in AMD anymore. Purely speculators and the same people that deal in penny stocks. They get crazy price swings.
 
dr/owned said:
So $1.50 or something crazy low is definitely on the table still.
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AMD seemed to have been planning for that when it switched to Nasdaq from NYSE, where it had been listed since the 1970s, a couple of weeks ago. Changes to AMD's credit rating, already at the minimum B required for NYSE listing, could have led to delisting. As AMD's cash reserves drop, the lower fees on Nasdaq could have also been a driver for the switch. Tales of fairy godmothers aside, there seems to be no end to AMD's quick burn through its low cash reserves, or valuable non-core assets to sell. The credit hit is almost inevitable at this point.
 
Update for anyone who cares:

"Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) on Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter loss of $364 million, after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company said it had a loss of 47 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for asset impairment costs and restructuring costs, came to roughly breakeven on a per-share basis."

They're currently down about 6% in afterhours trading on these results.

Death watch continues.
 
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Sigh. AMD, AMD, AMD :(

Do those results cover the profit from the gaming consoles?
 
atp1916 said:
Sigh. AMD, AMD, AMD :(

Do those results cover the profit from the gaming consoles?
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Yes. It's the overall figures being reported. Companies rarely break down their financials in a granular enough way to see how much money is being made from XYZ activity. Intel for example lumps mobile together with a bunch of other things to conceal the fact that Atom isn't making money.
 
Graphics and Computing was down 16% last quarter compared the same quarter a year prior. Makes reasons for axing of top execs more clear now. Seriously, AMD couldn't have done worse if it tried.
 
pxc said:
Graphics and Computing was down 16% last quarter compared the same quarter a year prior. Makes reasons for axing of top execs more clear now. Seriously, AMD couldn't have done worse if it tried.
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Samsung should buy AMD. Make a new Samsung Radeon card.
 
pxc said:
Graphics and Computing was down 16% last quarter compared the same quarter a year prior. Makes reasons for axing of top execs more clear now. Seriously, AMD couldn't have done worse if it tried.
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Nvidia has had 6 months of uncontested new architecture. All AMD could do was cut prices and cover their balls. They might do better in this quarter and Q2 if they get some new product out.
 
dr/owned said:
They might do better in this quarter and Q2 if they get some new product out.
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New and good product. Holding off on a new GPU since mine is still quite good and I love Eyefinity but for the first time since the P3 I switched to Intel for my CPU.
 
pxc said:
Graphics and Computing was down 16% last quarter compared the same quarter a year prior. Makes reasons for axing of top execs more clear now. Seriously, AMD couldn't have done worse if it tried.
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This time last year was the mining craze and AMD was selling massive amounts of cards for litecoin mining. I'm not surprised the results were lower this quarter, given that a) mining died out and b) AMD hasn't released a card to compete with the new generation of NVIDIA cards.

I think the rest of the year will be more positive.
 
pxc said:
Graphics and Computing was down 16% last quarter compared the same quarter a year prior. Makes reasons for axing of top execs more clear now. Seriously, AMD couldn't have done worse if it tried.
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Yeah, with nothing to counter GM204 + GM207, AMD has been decimated on the gaming laptop end of things, the last bastion of high margins left in the PC industry. Without a large portion of high-margin GPUs, there is no hope for a recovery, as there's no profit :(

They started the year with nothing to fend-off the GTX 860M (GM207). The GTX 860M had almost twice the performance at the same TDP as the R9 275M, AMD's most popular midrange card. You only have to read the number of Newegg matches for R9 M275 (3 products) versus the GTX 860M (45 products) to tell the story of which one OEMs preferred.

And for the proposed high-end savior Tonga, M295X, what happened there? It was supposed to allow AMD to go beyond the desktop 7850 they were passing-off as the M290X because the Hawaii core just leaks power like a sieve.

It was supposed to outperform the GTX 880M at the same power levels...and it did, barely! But alas, it was beaten to market 3 months earlier by the GTX 970M, which was even faster and used almost half the power. And the 980M set a new high-water-mark by performing nearly 50% faster than the 295X at the same TDP!

So now Tonga's only major design win is the 5k iMac, and even that may have been because AMD gave away the chips like they did with the Mac Pro GPUs.
 
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Rizen said:
This time last year was the mining craze and AMD was selling massive amounts of cards for litecoin mining. I'm not surprised the results were lower this quarter, given that a) mining died out and b) AMD hasn't released a card to compete with the new generation of NVIDIA cards.

I think the rest of the year will be more positive.
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AMD I don't believe ever increased the price they were charging retailers, so all the price gouging was padding Newegg and the like's profits, not AMD.
 
OEM's don't want APU's, they can't sell their low power SoC's to anyone and they can't keep up with demand on their workstation cards.

Their core exec's have been absolutely terrible the past 5 years.
 
dr/owned said:
AMD I don't believe ever increased the price they were charging retailers, so all the price gouging was padding Newegg and the like's profits, not AMD.
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No, but they moved a significant volume of product and had to increase production to meet demand. Assuming they had a decent margin on the high end (290/290X), they sold completely out of those cards for months. That had to help, at least in regards to revenue if not consumer perception.
 
Trimlock said:
OEM's don't want APU's, they can't sell their low power SoC's to anyone and they can't keep up with demand on their workstation cards.

Their core exec's have been absolutely terrible the past 5 years.
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As far as the APU's go, that is not at all true. Although I am not sure of other manufacturers, HP has an Elite line of Professional desktops that have AMD APU's in them. 3 year warranty, hdmi, Display Port and VGA out, 4 gigs of ram with 3 slots available and a decently quick machine.

Yes, it is not as fast as the Dell XPS 8700 machines we sell but, those do not come with Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8.1 Pro. The HP Elite machines come with both and Windows 7 Pro installed by default.
 
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