Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) Stock Reaches ‘Steve Jobs’ Status With Epyc
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When Lisa Su took the helm at Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) in late 2014, there was little fanfare or hope. AMD had a terrible history of strategic blunders and competition from fierce operators like Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC).Given all this, the consensus was that AMD stock was doomed.
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But interestingly enough, Su set forth a clear-cut plan for a turnaround. It was as if she stole from Steve Jobs playbook for his return to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in 1997.
The first step was to stabilize AMD stock through tough cost cutting. While that’s nothing new, it’s absolutely essential.
But for there to be a sustainable turnaround, a CEO needs to craft a realistic strategy to jump-start growth. For example, here’s how Steve Jobs put it during his famous keynote at the 1997 Macworld Expo:
“Apple is executing wonderfully on many of the wrong things … What I found is rather than anarchy, I found people who can’t wait to fall into line behind a good strategy. There just hasn’t been one.”
Well, as for Su, she came up with a “good strategy” as well. Although, as should be no surprise, it fell on deaf ears with Wall Street. By late 2015, AMD stock was below $2 per share.
Yet the most important thing was that the team at the company understood the strategy and were focused on execution. At the heart of it was to double down on the core graphics business.
Su understood that the tech world was rapidly moving toward more immersive systems, such as with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
Now it took a couple years to develop a strong product line. This was also done with limited resources. But as of this year, AMD is starting to reap the benefits. A key example of this is a recent deal with Apple. During the WDDC event, the company announced it will use the Radeon Pro 500 graphics chip for the iMac.
The press release noted the following:
“Radeon Pro 500 series graphics enable extraordinary computing experiences, including stunning gaming, immersive VR on select models, and fluid content creation with exceptional performance and support for GPU acceleration across a range of creative applications on the Mac platform, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop and the Foundry Nuke, Mari and Modo.”
Pretty good, right? On the news, AMD jumped about 7%.
But another key part of Su’s strategy is to leverage the proverbial fly-wheel. Keep in mind that graphics systems are critical for other important growth markets. After all, this technology has failry low costs and can process huge amounts of data.
So AMD is making a big push into the datacenter market, which is estimated at a whopping $21 billion (this is according to the latest investor day meeting).
Keep in mind that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated every day, such as from Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL,NASDAQ:GOOG) Google searches, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) posts and YouTube views. There is also the large number of cloud-based business apps from companies like salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM).
As for AMD, the company has been working hard on developing its data center offering, Epyc, which is expected to launch today. AMD stock surged 6% ahead of AMD’s unveiling.
Today, we’re bringing you #EPYC. Follow @AMDServer for updates at 3PM CT & tune in tonight for a full video recap. https://t.co/AzbdrLYnpE pic.twitter.com/CjviRx9W6Z
— AMD (@AMD) June 20, 2017
Epyc is definitely impressive when compared with INTC.
Epyc has, “45% more cores, 60% more input-output capacity, and 122% more memory bandwidth than its nearest rival.” Such capabilities will be critical for the kinds of things companies want — that is, machine learning, massive storage and intensive processing of data.
Despite the solid strategy, there are definitely risks with AMD stock. No doubt, turnarounds are usually choppy and volatile.
But the good news is that not only does Su have a compelling strategy, it has been backed up with strong execution. So in light of the potential growth opportunities in markets for graphics and the data center, there is likely more room on the upside for AMD stock.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook and is the author of various books, including All About Commodities, All About Short Selling and High-Profit IPO Strategies. Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
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