AMD Reports Q2 2021 Earnings: Company-wide Growth Drives Doubled Revenue
by Ryan Smith on July 27, 2021 5:25 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- GPUs
- Financial Results
- Xilinx
Continuing our Q2 earnings coverage this month, AMD is next out the gate in reporting their earnings. And, has been the story now for most of the last year, AMD is enjoying explosive revenue growth across the company. CPU, GPU, and semi-custom sales are all up, pushing the limits of what AMD can do amidst the current chip crunch, and pushing the company to new levels of profitability in the process.
For the second quarter of 2021, AMD reported $3.85B in revenue, making for yet another massive jump over a year-ago quarter for AMD, when the company made just $1.93B in a then-record quarter. Now, half-way through 2021, AMD’s financial trajectory is all about setting (and beating) records for the company, as evidenced by the 99% leap in year-over-year revenue – falling just millions short of outright doubling their revenue.
AMD’s big run-up in revenue is also reflected in the company’s other metrics; along with that revenue AMD’s net income has grown by 352% year-over-year, now reaching $710M. And if not for an unusual, one-off tax benefit for AMD’s Q4’2020, this would have been AMD’s most profitable quarter ever – and indeed is on a non-GAAP basis. Meanwhile, as you might expect from such high net income figures, AMD’s gross margin has risen even further and now sits at 48%, up 4 percentage points from the year-ago quarter and 2 points from last quarter.
| AMD Q2 2021 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||||
| Q2'2021 | Q2'2020 | Q1'2021 | Y/Y | Q/Q | |||
| Revenue | $3.85B | $1.93B | $3.45B | +99% | +12% | ||
| Gross Margin | 48% | 44% | 46% | +4pp | +2pp | ||
| Operating Income | $831M | $173M | $662M | +380% | +26% | ||
| Net Income | $710M | $157M | $555M | +352% | +28% | ||
| Earnings Per Share | $0.58 | $0.13 | $0.45 | +346% | +29% | ||
Breaking down AMD’s results by segment, we start with Computing and Graphics, which encompasses their desktop and notebook CPU sales, as well as their GPU sales. That division booked $2.25B in revenue for the quarter, $883M (65%) more than Q2 2020. Accordingly, the segment’s operating income is (once more) up significantly as well, going from $200M a year ago to $526M this year.
As always, AMD doesn’t provide a detailed breakout of information from this segment, but they have provided some selective information on revenue and average selling prices (ASPs). Overall, client CPU sales have remained strong; client CPU ASPs are up on both a quarterly and yearly basis, indicating that AMD has been selling a larger share of high-end (high-margin) parts. According to AMD this is the case for both desktop and laptop sales, and making this the fifth straight quarter of revenue share gains.
Meanwhile the company is reporting similarly good news from their GPU business. As with CPUs, ASPs for AMD’s GPU business as up on both a yearly and quarterly basis. According to the company this is being driven by demand for high-end Radeon 6000 video cards, as well as AMD Instinct (data center) sales. AMD began initial shipments of their first CDNA 2 architecture-based Instinct accelerators in Q2, opening the spigot there for data center GPU revenue going into Q3.
| AMD Q2 2021 Reporting Segments | |||||
| Q2'2021 | Q2'2020 | Q1'2021 | |||
|
Computing and Graphics
|
|||||
| Revenue | $2250M | $1367M | $2100M | ||
| Operating Income | $526M | $200M | $485M | ||
|
Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom
|
|||||
| Revenue | $1600M | $565M | $1345M | ||
| Operating Income | $398M | $33M | $277M | ||
Moving on, AMD’s Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom segment has once again experienced a quarter of rapid growth, thanks to the success of AMD’s EPYC processors and demand for the 9th generation consoles. This segment of the company booked $1.6B in revenue, $1035M (183%) more than what they pulled in for Q2’20, and 19% ahead of an already impressive Q1’21. The big jump in revenue also means that the segment is even further into the black on an operating income basis, continuing to close the gap with the Computing and Graphics segment even with the all-around growth.
Overall, both the enterprise and semi-custom sides of this segment are up on a yearly basis. AMD set another record for server processor revenue this quarter on the strength of EPYC processor sales. Meanwhile semi-custom revenue was up on both a yearly and a quarterly basis, reflecting the continued demand for the latest generation of consoles.
Looking forward, AMD’s expectations for the quarter and for the rest of the year have been bumped up once again. For Q3 the company expects to book $4.1B (+/- $100M) in revenue, which if it comes to pass will be 46% growth over Q3’20. Meanwhile AMD’s full year 2021 projection now stands at a 60% year-over-year increase in revenue versus their $9.8B FY2020, which is 10 percentage points higher than their forecast from the end of Q1.
Finally, while AMD doesn’t have any major updates on the ongoing Xilinx acquisition, the company has reiterated that it remains on-track. Which means that if all goes according to plan, it will close by the end of the year.
Source: AMD
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Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
'Same.'Tu quoque fallacy.
'I don't care if you're an Oxford prof or a homeless dropout. Since we can't verify your background, it counts for nothing.'
Another ad hom.
Do you have nothing else in your repetoire?
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Lol, FSR. Good on them for making it open and supporting other hardware, but it's no DLSS.mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
They're going to have to do better. Probably not much more is possible on current hardware, though.Thunder 57 - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
AMD is playing a bit of "catch up" in the GPU realm as they devoted most of their resources to Zen, rightfully so, as it probably saved them from bankruptcy. The real question is can they catch up NVIDIA. WCCFTech covered a rumor that RDNA3 will be better than Lovelace, but it is WCCFtech, so who knows.They are close to NVIDIA with RDNA2 if you exclude extras like RT and DLSS. NVIDIA got the head start though so AMD is playing catch up there.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
'AMD is playing a bit of "catch up" in the GPU realm as they devoted most of their resources to Zen, rightfully so,'It would have bankrupted the company to not release Vega (after such a long delay) with identical IPS to Fury X.
(eyeroll)
Wake up and realize that AMD actively works against the PC gaming market.
It makes mining GPUs and allocates wafers for the 'console' scam. It actively works to keep prices too high in the PC gaming market in a variety of ways, in order to make the 'console' scam function.
It also exploits the dire lack of competition in GPUs, where desperate stupid people will buy its products due to emotional nonsense — like 'It's my donation to keep competition alive!' and 'I'm team red because I like the underdog' — and also because Nvidia keeps prices very high (thanks to help from AMD) so AMD can sell things like 'Polaris forever'.
AMD is also the company that broke AVX when it 'improved' upon Bulldozer (with the Piledriver release) and had the audacity to release the 9000 series, with extremely high prices based on falsehoods like 5 GHz and 8 cores.
It didn't bother to provide even a shred of value to gamers, only hype and lies. The single-thread IPC of Piledriver was so terrible that even at over 5 GHz (don't ask how much power that required, or the cost of the board, or the cost of the cooling, or the noise) it was too slow to prevent lag problems. It could have replaced Piledriver with something that would better justify the extremely high price it put on the 9000 series but... nope. Maximum ridiculousness. Maximum cravenness.
What does it take for people to stop peddling AMD's propaganda? I suppose it takes not having investments in one or more of the following: AMD, Nvidia, Sony, Microsoft... and even Nintendo.
Even Nintendo is helped by the console scam because if there would be robust demand for the PC gaming platform and affordable hardware to go with it that's not locked behind a ton of duplicate walled gardens (aka the 'consoles'), then portable PC gaming systems — recognized for what they are — x86 bog-standard PC gaming hardware ... that even use the same substandard craven joystick mechanism ... Nintendo would have a harder time selling its overpriced substandard hardware complete with its own superfluous parasitic walled garden.
AMD has stated it had no intention of reducing the attractiveness of its cards for mining.
These are the sort of bald facts that jokers on this site like to ignore in favor of ad hominem and flamboyant specious braggartry.
AMD won't sell cards made for PC gaming, rather than cards for mining and wafers for consoles. How can that be? AMD is some sort of benighted altruistic superhero... not a money-grubbing corporation that has absolutely no soul and, like any corporation, is designed to extract maximum profit via delivering the least value to the consumer. Sell less for more. Astroturf the truth away.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
'It would have bankrupted the company to not release Vega (after such a long delay) with identical IPS to Fury X.'Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
'It would have bankrupted the company to not release Vega (after such a long delay) with identical IPC to Fury X.'IPC... Ugh. It took three posts but that was the original idea.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> identical IPC to Fury XAnd again, this is you not understanding GPU performance. Vega 64 performed a lot better than Fury X, because GPU performance is not simply a function of IPC.
In point of fact, the entire range of GCN GPUs, spanning all the way from the HD 7000-series (launched in 2012) to Radeon VII (launched in 2019), had basically the same instruction throughput per CU per clock.
Qasar - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
" allocates wafers for the 'console' scam. "do you have link that shows its AMD's allocation of wafers, and not sony/MS that is buying the wafers ??
are you forgetting the reports that nvidia sold cards directly to minors ? you ONLY seem to be pointing the finger at AMD, while forgetting the prices nvidia and intel also charged for its products.
i guess cause you hate " a ton of duplicate walled gardens " i guess Apple's whole product line, makes you catatonic
as i said, post links to this BS. so far, it is ONLY your opinion.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
'do you have link that shows its AMD's allocation of wafers, and not sony/MS that is buying the wafers ??'Irrelevant.