AMD Beats Wall Street's Forecast

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) beat Wall Street's estimates amid strong chip demand in the third quarter.

AMD reported sales of $1.33 billion and net income of $134 million, or $0.27 per share, for the quarter ended Oct. 1. These results include $16.5 million of employee stock-based compensation expense.

Wall Street was looking for $0.24 a share on sales of $1.31 billion.

This compares to a profit of $88.8 million, or $0.18 a share, on sales of $1.2 billion in the previous quarter. In the like period a year ago, AMD (Sunnyvale, Calif.) posted a profit of $76 million, or $0.18 a share, on sales of $1.5 billion.

''Third quarter sales increased nine percent from the prior quarter, and 32 percent year-over-year, due to strong demand for all AMD processor brands,'' said Robert J. Rivet, AMD's chief financial officer, in a statement. ''Microprocessor unit shipments grew 18 percent sequentially.''

Desktop processor sales were flat sequentially with increased unit shipments offset by decreased ASPs. AMD expects demand for its products to be seasonally strong in the fourth quarter and sales to increase sequentially.

Rival Intel Corp. posted third quarter net income of $1.3 billion, up 47 percent sequentially but down 35 percent year-to-year, the company said Tuesday (Oct. 17).