Amd (AMD. US) announced its better than expected fourth quarter and full year financial results of fiscal year 2021 after hours on Tuesday. It is worth noting that the company's performance guidance for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022 not only exceeded market expectations, but also reached almost the same profit level as Intel (INTC. Us). Five years ago, AMD's profit margin was even less than half that of Intel, but now it will catch up with Intel in terms of performance and market competition. As of press time, amd rose 10.89% to $129.50.
AMD, which has long been at a disadvantage in the chip industry, achieved record revenue at the end of 2021, more than three times the annual sales five years ago. Specifically, the company's Q4 revenue was US $4.826 billion, up 49% from US $3.244 billion in the same period last year, and the market is expected to be US $4.5 billion; The gross profit margin was 50%, compared with 45% in the same period last year.
In addition, in terms of performance guidance, the company expects that the revenue in the first quarter of 2022 will be about US $5 billion, floating up and down US $100 million, with a year-on-year increase of about 45%, a month on month increase of 4%, and the market is expected to be us $4.33 billion; The gross profit margin under non GAAP accounting standards is about 50.5%.
Moreover, amd also expects the non GAAP gross profit margin to be about 51% in 2022, which is almost the same as Intel's forecast of 51% to 53%. Compared with five years ago, Intel's profit margin was more than 63%, while AMD's profit margin was 31%. In addition, amd expects sales to grow by about 31% to $21.5 billion this year, compared with analysts' forecast of $19.3 billion.
market competition is becoming dominant
Since amd CEO Lisa Su took office in 2015, investors have been waiting for more evidence that the company can continue to profit from Intel, which once dominated. Under the leadership of Su, amd developed leading components, which led more chip customers to abandon Intel and support AMD.
Although pat Gelsinger, Intel's CEO at the helm last year, claimed that his company was providing better PC processors than AMD, and industry researchers had not provided data for the fourth quarter, according to mercury research, amd took more than 2 percentage points of market share from Intel in the third quarter.
In terms of specific business, the sales of amd data center (including chips used by companies such as Google and Amazon's AWS) doubled year-on-year in fiscal 2021 . The company also said on Tuesday that the demand of its cloud customers has increased, and these customers are deploying their epyc server chips in their data centers. However, Intel said last week that the demand for chips used in these data centers was strong, but the sales of the largest cloud computing provider fell.
In addition, AMD is also the second largest manufacturer of PC game external card graphics card , competing with NVIDIA in this market, and Intel has begun to provide products in this field for the first time in many years. It is reported that AMD, located in Santa Clara, California, provides graphics chips for Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's Playstation, and said at the earnings meeting that the demand for these two game consoles "continues to exceed all previous generations".
Last week, the State Administration of market supervision conditionally approved AMD's acquisition of xlnx. Us, clearing the way for one of the largest transactions in the global semiconductor industry. At present, the acquisition has been approved by regulators in other countries such as the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom.
It is reported that AMD announced the deal in 2020. At that time, Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, signed the agreement to help amd develop and challenge Intel's leading position in the chip field . The acquisition of Xilinx will help amd enter fields such as automobile and communication network, and enhance its supply in the lucrative cloud data center component market.
