This afternoon, AMD announced their earnings for the fourth quarter of 2017. AMD ended the 2017 fiscal year on a high note, with earnings that beat their initial estimates. For the quarter, revenues were up 34% from a year ago to $1.48 billion, and AMD was able to maintain the 35% gross margin they achieved last quarter as well, which is right where they need to be for profitability. Operating income for the quarter was $82 million, up from an operating loss of $3 million a year ago. Net income was $61 million, once again compared to a net loss of $51 million a year ago. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.06.

AMD Q4 2017 Financial Results (GAAP)
  Q4'2017 Q3'2017 Q4'2016
Revenue $1480M $1643M $1106M
Gross Margin 35% 35% 32%
Operating Income +$82M +$126M -$3M
Net Income +$61M +$71M -$51M
Earnings Per Share +$0.06 +$0.07 -$0.06

AMD also reports non-GAAP results, which are generally there to show the underlying business performance when they have large write downs, but this quarter AMD’s non-GAAP results closely mirror the GAAP performance, but with no wafer restructuring or other large expenses, the non-GAAP results for this quarter are mainly excluding stock-based compensation, which was $21 million for the quarter. In terms of non-GAAP, operating income was $103 million, net income was $88 million, and earnings per share were $0.08.

For the full year, AMD had revenues of $5.53 billion, which was up 25% from 2016, with an overall gross margin of 34%. Operating income for the year was $204 million, compared to an operating loss of $372 million the year before. Net income for the company for the full year was $43 million, compared to a $497 million loss in 2016.

The bulk of the growth from AMD is unsurprisingly from their Computing and Graphics segment, which has seen somewhat of a perfect storm, with the release of the well-received Ryzen CPU lineup this year, along with a cryptocurrency market which is currently absorbing every GPU it can get its hands on. Thanks to new product releases in both the CPU and GPU from AMD, Computing and Graphics had revenue for the quarter of $958 million, which is up 60% from a year ago. This segment had an operating income of $85 million, up from a net loss of $21 million a year ago.

AMD Q4 2017 Computing and Graphics
  Q4'2017 Q3'2017 Q4'2016
Revenue $958M $819M $600M
Operating Income +$85M +$70M -$21M

Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom had segment revenue for the quarter of $522 million, which is up 3% from a year ago, which AMD attributes to server revenue. The segment had an operating income of $19 million, down from $47 million a year ago.

AMD Q4 2017 Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom
  Q4'2017 Q3'2017 Q4'2016
Revenue $522M $824M $506M
Operating Income $19M $84M $47M

All Other had an operating loss of $22 million, which is an improvement from the $29 million loss in Q4 2016.

AMD is expecting revenues of $1.55 billion for Q1 2018, plus or minus $50 million.

2018 looks to be an exciting year for AMD, after their first really successful year in a long time. AMD is expecting to see Ryzen Mobile designs from all the major PC OEMs soon, which should help get it into the hands of more customers (and reviewers!) and the agreement to build a GPU for Intel to integrated on their own CPU is an interesting way to get Radeon into the hands of more people.

Source: AMD Investor Relations

 

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  • Cliff34 - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link

    Good to see AMD no longer operating in the red. Let's hope this year will be better for them against Intel.
  • iter - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Popping its head out of loss for a quarter or two will not change a thing, amd has to manage to stay there long term. Amd has had many quarters it didn't post a loss the last 20 years, but still is at a net loss of billions of dollars.
  • Valantar - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    "Operating income for the year was $204 million, compared to an operating loss of $372 million the year before."

    As such, we're talking four consecutive quarters, with the major launches that have most heavily impacted financials trickling out over the 2nd-3rd. This isn't sayning "AMD is a rock-solid business now", but things are definitely looking up. From the looks of it, Su is doing an amazing job.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    I would think the huge part of this is popularity of Xbox One and PS4. To say that AMD money come back is because of Ryzen is pre-mature. Keep in mind Intel takes in at least 10 times as much as AMD.
  • FullmetalTitan - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Console sales peak in the holiday season, which means that those chips were ordered in Q3. Q4 profits were HEAVILY driven by consumer Ryzen sales and inking new contracts with cloud service groups, per Lisa Su herself.
  • Samus - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    I agree. Zen isn’t responsible for profit in Q3/4, GPU’s. As they have been for the last decade. AMD buying ATI was probably the best decision AMD ever made.
  • Samus - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    I’m still trying to wrap my head around how they have an operating income of less than a billion per quarter in graphics, when seemingly they can’t even keep cards on the shelf. I’ve been trying to buy a VEGA56 for months...

    Are they just st production capacity or what?
  • phoenix_rizzen - Monday, February 5, 2018 - link

    See the follow-up article (https://www.anandtech.com/show/12380/amd-to-ramp-u... They're pretty much limited in how many GPUs they can pump out by how much GDDR5/HBM2 RAM they can procure.
  • SentientOverlord - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link

    I am looking forward to what AMD has in store for the foreseeable future. I just wish more investors would recognize that AMD is here to stay. We need the market to have more faith in what Lisa Su and the team at AMD are trying to do to keep competition high.
  • Kjella - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link

    Well it's 50-50, the Zen products are AMDs doing. That crypto-mining is driving the GPU prices nuts is just free windfall for both AMD and nVidia, right now they can sell anything and everything they can manufacture. And it can equally unpredictable come crashing down or transition to FPGA/ASIC miners causing a massive oversupply of second-hand cards afterwards. Of course being in the black is better than being in the red, but I can understand investors are weary.

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