AMD investors are paying more attention to CPU momentum than they were recently.
Advanced Micro Devices' earnings validated what Intel conveyed just a few weeks ago: The market for central processing units is red hot, with momentum picking up further from here.
It's a trend that those who had been sidelined on AMD's stock say they should have seen coming. "In hindsight, Intel's results were a very clear signal that AMD's business was picking up," Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg wrote as he upgraded AMD's stock to buy from neutral on Wednesday.
AMD shares are soaring 15% in Wednesday morning action. Were that gain to carry through the close, AMD's stock would see its best postearnings performance since Jan. 30, 2019, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Previously, Goldberg wanted to see how AMD would do with the ramp of its MI450 graphics processing unit before taking a rosier view of the stock. But "demand for CPUs has pulled up the timeline considerably for earnings," he acknowledged Wednesday.
Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon was also more upbeat about AMD's earnings prospects following the latest report, as he turned bullish on the stock as well.
Rasgon said AMD could generate more than $14 in adjusted earnings per share in 2027. His model has the company nearing $20 on the metric for 2028. That's well above the FactSet consensus, which was modeling less than $12 and less than $16, respectively.
Seaport's Goldberg is enthusiastic about AMD's disclosure that it secured more manufacturing capacity from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. This is a crucial development because it's apparent that chip demand is very strong, but a company can't fully capitalize on that unless it can make enough chips.
"Our guiding thesis currently is that companies with access to capacity (or in this case in the form of allocation from TSMC) will outperform as demand ripples across the industry," Goldberg wrote.
Still, some questions remain. "The world has changed," Morgan Stanley's Joseph Moore wrote as he considered how investors have become much more swayed by CPU results than in the past. But the company's GPU business remains "in a holding pattern" as customers await the launch of the MI455 accelerator later this year.
"What matters is the rack-scale launch in [the second half], which we continue to view as a show-me story given inconclusive customer feedback thus far," wrote Moore, who has an equal-weight rating on AMD's stock. "The company said that initial feedback gives them visibility into a larger opportunity set, but with no specificity and certainly no [second-half] clarity."
Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis, who rates AMD shares at buy, agreed that "GPU execution in the back half remains the key swing factor."
Comments