Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) dropped 9% in early market premarket trading on Wednesday after its first-quarter forecast fell short of some analyst expectations.
AMD reported revenue of $10.27 billion for the fourth quarter that topped LSEG consensus estimates of $9.67 billion on Tuesday.
The company said it expects $9.8 billion in revenue for the first quarter, plus or minus $300 million, versus expectations of $9.38 billion. But some analysts had predicted the chipmaker would provide stronger guidance for the first-quarter amid an ongoing boom in spending for the processors needed to power AI.
AMD, which alongside Nvidia is one of the key makers of AI chips, has seen its stock surge more than 100% in the past year on the back of rising demand.
AMD stock over the past year
“First, expectations were pretty sky high,” said Susquehanna’s Chris Rolland, talking on CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime.”
“Secondly, they announced they shipped Chinese revenue in the quarter that was unexpected. This was not in street numbers, so when you account for that, the beat was far less substantial than we would’ve thought.”
However, he added, demand for AMD’s chips in data centers was still strong and the company was hinting at multi-gigawatt contracts to come in the future.
The chipmaker inked a deal with OpenAI in October that could see the startup take a 10% stake in AMD. OpenAI will deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD’s Instinct graphics processing units over multiple years beginning with an initial 1-gigawatt rollout of chips in the second half of 2026, the companies said.
Oracle also announced in October plans to deploy 50,000 of AMD’s AI chips beginning later this year.
