Following our story announcing the quarterly call, we waited until 11PM CET and listened to the call. Quite frankly, this call was worse than I expected. The loss was 1.42 billion USD, or 2.34 per share – and the share itself is now worth less than two dollars ($1.96 during after-hours). Sales dropped down to 1.16 billion USD, 33% less than in previous quarter.
People that were allowed to ask a question once more failed to ask the tough questions, and one must wonder what the heck is going on and why nobody dares to the really rough questions, such as whose responsibility was that a company that invented netbook market failed to cash in on the deal, why did AMD pay 5.4 billion USD for the company which now values at 2.1 billion USD, or roughly twice the market cap of the whole company (ok, “roughly” – AMD’s mkt cap is 1.23 billion USD).
Personally, I am saddened at the fact that AMD slept on its laurels for too long with 90nm procesors and that some of brilliant people, people that created the success in commercial market for the first time in AMD’s history – are no longer at the helm of the company. Seeing AMD now is just a pain – so many good people work night and day and create truly great products, but the management just isn’t there. AMD’s management should be on court to explain to its customers and shareholders who is responsible for losing 7 billion dollars in the past nine quarters and stock dropping from 46 USD to less than two dollars! One must ask him/herself… when is AMD going to wake up and smell the coffee? AMD should be headed by Dave Orton and S&M division should be lead by Henri Richard.
Or, here is a crazy wild card… yes, you may pronounce me insane, but the person that AMD needs is no other than Wolfgang Mayrhuber. Wolfgang who, you might ask… he is CEO of Lufthansa Group, quite frankly the most profitable airline in a year that saw other airlines losing billions of dollars due to crazy prices of oil and worldwide recession. By leading Lufthansa Group, Wolfgang proved to be the best man for a tough industry and took a company that was really strong in Europe and turned it into one of largest and probably the most profitable airline. Wolfgang will leave the company this summer, mandatory by internal policy of Lufthansa Group.
Can this guy bring sweetness of AMD's product line to currently bitter taste of AMD's financial results?
His next spot is probably either at the helm of Star Alliance, succeeding his predecessor in Lufthansa, or maybe replacing Mr Glenn Tilton from United Airlines. However, if Mr. Mayrhuber is tired of battling all those lost battles with moronic members of media who claim that planes pollute the planet the most (with less than 2% overall CO2 share… and are the most economical and ecological way to transport large number of people… but nevermind that)… maybe, but just maybe – Mr. Mayrhuber should think about taking helm of AMD and turning the tide on this company. Who knows, if AMD would end up with Mr. Mayrhuber from Lufthansa, John Leahy from Airbus SAS or getting Henri Richard back… there might be something to write about besides numerous write-offs and remembering how rich people like former CEO became. All engineering projects in the company should be lead by former ATI people… Raja Koduri should be the CTO for the whole company, while the CPU team should be integrated in AMD GPG – because this is NOT the way to go. Intel US had to eat the humble pie and let Intel Israel to bail out the mother company and its sinking Pentium 4 ship (or chip). Result was Core architecture, or nothing else but sheer brilliance of engineering teams. AMD’s “Intel Israel” is no other than AMD GPG in Santa Clara, Boston, Orlando and Markham (pardon if I am leaving anybody out).
Whoever is the next or current CEO of AMD, he should be paid $1/year plus 1M stocks/year, NOT a 20% salary cut when the company is bleeding billions of dollars. “Virtual” (write-off) and real ones.
