Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So from a — from an overall efficiency standpoint, I think we’ve developed fantastic products. We are working closely with our customers to ensure that we continue to evolve our overall portfolio. So I think from a value-added standpoint, it’s providing the best TCO is what our customers are looking for, and that’s where our road map is headed. Going forward, I think having the CPU, the GPU, the FPGAs, the DPUs, I think it gives us actually a nice portfolio to really optimize not just on a single component basis but on sort of all of the different workloads that you need in the data center.

Harsh Kumar: Very helpful, Lisa. And then for my follow-up, a lot of folks that we talk to think that compute game is shifting completely from CPUs to GPUs. [Technical Difficulty] So it was actually very encouraging to hear you talk about your core EPYC CPUs and the traction that you’re seeing with the new generation of CPUs. So I’m curious, if I was to ask you how you think the long-term growth prospects for the next, call it, two to three to four years our for your CPU business, not the GPU but the CPU business, I’m curious what the answer would be.

Lisa Su: Yeah. So look, I’m a big believer and you need all types of compute in the data center, especially when you look at the diverse set of workloads. There’s a lot of excitement around AI, and we are very much clear that, that is the number one priority from a growth standpoint going forward. But the EPYC CPU business, we feel like we’ve consistently gained share throughout the last few years. And even with that, we’re still underrepresented in large portions of the market, right? We’re underrepresented in enterprise. We’ve seen some nice sort of sequential growth and nice prospects there, but there’s a lot more we can do in enterprise. And we’re still underrepresented in cloud third-party workloads, which, again, it’s a — you have to sell through the cloud manufacturers. So I think overall, we feel good about our EPYC leadership and also our go-to-market efforts that will help us continue to grow that business in 2024 and beyond.

Mitch Haws: Operator, we have time for two more questions.

Operator: Okay. And the next question comes from the line of Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research. Please proceed with your question/

Stacy Rasgon: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I wanted to just dial in on the Q4 guidance. If you are going to grow Data Center 50% half over half and I assume Client is up sequentially, implies Gaming and Embedded both likely down sequentially in the 20% range. I know you said double-digits. But is that right? And if that is true, especially for Embedded, what does that mean going forward into next year? I know you said it’s going to be weak in the first half. Does that mean — I mean, is it stable at these levels or does it continue to decline through the first half until things stabilize? Just how do we think about that in the context of the guidance that you’ve given for Q4?

Lisa Su: Yes. Sure, Stacy. Let me take that and then Jean might add a few comments. So without getting very specific, I would say I think your comments about Data Center and Client are correct. And then from an Embedded and Gaming standpoint, we would say Embedded, think about it down similar levels sort of in the teens compared to sort of Q3 was down in the teens and Q4 will be down in the teens. And then Gaming, from a console standpoint, we do expect that to be down a bit more than that. And then as we go into Q1, again without being — there are lots of things that need to happen. We would expect that both gaming and embedded would be down into Q1 as well and sort of the other comments would be more around seasonality. Does that help?

Stacy Rasgon: That does help. For my follow-up, again, I wanted to ask about gross margins. So I know that they’ve been extending through the year, but for the full year, they’re actually down. And I get the mix things and everything else. But as I look into next year, like how do I think about this because it sounds like Embedded is going to be pretty weak next year. Client is what it is. Data Center is growing but it does feel like even if the GPUs are accretive, they’re not accretive yet, and it’s going to take them a while to get to be accretive. Like how much do you think you can expand gross margins year-over-year like in ’24 versus ’23, given the trends that we have entering the year?

Jean Hu: Yeah. Hi, Stacy. I’ll say the first thing is, if you look at 2023, it’s a very unusual year for the industry, right, especially the PC market. It’s one of the worst down cycles during the last 3 decades. So during that kind of a down cycle, definitely, we had headwinds on gross margin side, on our Client business, which we have made significant progress in Q3 and Q4 in second half. Going into next year, the mix primarily is the driver of our gross margin. The way to think about it is Data Center is going to be the largest incremental revenue contributor next year. And then with both Gaming and Embedded facing continued sequential decline, I think it’s all about the mix. We do expect next year will improve gross margin versus 2023, especially second half. So that’s how we think about it right now.

Operator: And our final question comes from the line of Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.

Christopher Rolland: Thanks for the question. There was an article suggesting that you guys could be interested in doing some ARM-based CPUs. I guess I’d love any thoughts that you have there on that architecture for PC. But also Apple has their M3 out now. It seems pretty robust. Qualcomm has an X Elite new chip. It was rumored NVIDIA might be doing that as well. Would love your expectations for this market. And what does that mean for the TAM for AMD moving forward?

Lisa Su: Yeah. Sure, Chris. Thanks for the question. So look, the way we think about ARM, ARM is a partner in many respects so we use ARM throughout parts of our portfolio. I think as it relates to PCs, x86 is still the majority of the volume in PCs. And if you think about sort of the ecosystem around x86 and Windows, I think it’s been a very robust ecosystem. What I’m most excited about in PCs is actually the AI PC. I think the AI PC opportunity is an opportunity to redefine what PCs are in terms of productivity tool and really sort of operating on sort of user data. And so I think we’re at the beginning of a wave there. We’re investing heavily in Ryzen AI and the opportunity to really broaden sort of the AI capabilities of PCs going forward.