AMD's Stock Price Jumps On News Of Stellar Earnings Spurred By Ryzen

AMD has done a bang up job making its mainstream processors truly competitive with Intel again, allowing it to compete in the high-end of the market and draw the attention of enthusiasts. The hard work is paying off financially, too—AMD reported revenue of $1.65 billion in the first quarter of 2018, up 23 percent sequentially and a whopping 40 percent versus the same quarter a year ago. After paying the bills, AMD was left with an $81 million profit, versus a $19 million loss in the previous quarter and a $33 million loss a year ago.

"The first quarter was an outstanding start to 2018 with 40 percent year-over-year revenue growth," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "PC, gaming and datacenter adoption of our new, high-performance products continues to accelerate. We are excited about our long-term roadmaps and focused on delivering sustained revenue growth and profitability."

AMD's performance bested expectations on Wall Street, and investors reacted by pushing the company's stock price up more than 12 percent to $9.71 per share in pre-market trading. More importantly for AMD, it has a strong product lineup to build upon and carry the momentum throughout 2018. The company recently launched its second generation Ryzen chips, which deliver more performance per dollar compared to its first-gen Ryzen CPUs.

The company is also well positioned to compete in the workstation and datacenter markets with its Epyc processor family. Just last week, supercomputing powerhouse and longtime Intel partner Cray started offering Epyc CPU options in one of its high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and we wouldn't be surprised to see more companies embrace AMD's chip offerings based on its Zen and Zen+ architectures (along with Zen 2 next year).

On the graphics side, AMD benefited from a cryptocurrency gold rush that saw miners deplete the market of graphics cards, leaving gamers lamenting on the sideline. Dr. Lisa Sue has gone on record downplaying just how much cryptocurrency contributes to its bottom line, though the company did state in its earnings report that the average selling price for GPUs increased both sequentially and year-over-year, as a result of "new Radeon products."

Armed with a strong portfolio of products and technologies, the trick for AMD going forward is to continue executing on time and not letting its foot off the accelerator.

Top Image Source: Twitter via Dr. Lisa Su