Not long ago, analysts doubt about AMD's continued ability to increase profit margins and the average selling price of its desktop processors. The company's revenue, in their opinion, will continue to grow, but due to an increase in sales volumes, and not the average price. True, this forecast does not apply to the server segment, since the potential of EPYC processors in this sense is almost unlimited.
AMD representatives at the quarterly reporting conference gave conflicting signals regarding the timing of the announcement of 7-nm processors of the Ryzen 3000 family. Lisa Su noted several times in her comments that the debut of these processors in the desktop segment was being prepared, but when it came to communicating with analysts, she misspoke, classifying these processors as those already officially presented. Apparently, this was referring to the preliminary announcement at the January CES 2019 event.
Matisse central processors with Zen 2 architecture turned out to be the only 7nm AMD products, the company did not say anything clear and specific about the timing of the announcement at its reporting conference. What is known is that they will already be present on the market in the second half of the year, since the head of AMD pins his hopes on further growth in sales volumes and market share with this event.
Lisa Su sees no reason why the increase in the average selling price of desktop processors would stop in the coming quarters. The new processors will raise the performance level of the AMD platform, and this will increase the share of more expensive models in the sales structure. The head of the company considers strengthening AMD’s position in the segment of expensive processors to be one of its priorities. CFO Devinder Kumar added that by the end of the current year, AMD's profit margin could exceed 41%.
One of the invited analysts asked Lisa Su whether a shortage of competitor processors was helping AMD's sales. She noted that “emptiness” is indeed observed, but mainly in the lower price segment. From AMD's point of view, these developments do not open up significant additional growth opportunities. This year, AMD hopes for stable growth in the personal computer market, not only due to third-generation Ryzen desktop processors, but also due to second-generation mobile processors. AMD partners are ready to increase the range of laptops based on Ryzen processors by one and a half times compared to 2018.
AMD attributed high demand for client processors to one of the factors that allowed it to overcome the negative impact of the recession in the graphics market in the first quarter. The older Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 models sold well, sales volumes increased compared to the fourth quarter and were higher than traditional for this season. Compared to the first quarter of 2018, processor sales volumes increased by double-digit percentages, and the average selling price increased. Although AMD management does not give exact figures, it states that for the sixth quarter in a row the company has been strengthening its position in the processor market.
Source: 3dnews.ru