AMD eeks out revenue win, but misses earnings targets

AMD reported its fourth quarter and fiscal 2014 earnings after the bell Tuesday.

The semiconductor maker reported a net loss of $364 million, or 47 cents per share (statement).

Non-GAAP earnings per share were flat on a revenue of $1.24 billion.

Wall Street was expecting AMD to post earnings of a penny per share on a revenue of $1.24 billion.

The outcome is a stark contrast from a year ago, when AMD posted earnings of 6 cents per share on revenue of $1.59 billion.

For the fiscal year, AMD reported revenue of $5.51 billion, an increase of 4 percent year-over-year. However that figure is marred by the chipmaker's net loss of $403 million, a dramatic increase from the $83 million net loss it reported for 2013.

Despite the company's fiscal hardships, AMD CEO Lisa Su kept an upbeat tone in prepared remarks:

We made progress diversifying our business, ramping design wins and improving our balance sheet this past year despite challenges in our PC business. Annual Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment revenue increased over 50 percent as customer demand for products powered by our high-performance compute and rich visualization solutions was strong. We continue to address channel headwinds in the Computing and Graphics segment and are taking steps to return it to a healthy trajectory beginning in the second quarter of 2015.

Here's a closer breakdown of the company's performance, by department:

• Computing and graphics: Segment revenue decreased 15 percent sequentially and 16 percent year-over-year. AMD attributes the sequential decrease to lower desktop processor and GPU sales, as well as lower desktop processor and chipset sales.
• Enterprise, embedded and semi-custom: Segment revenue decreased 11 percent sequentially due to lower sales of semi-custom SoCs, the company said.

For Q1 2015, AMD expects revenue to decrease 15 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, sequentially.