AMD posted its Q1 2020 financial results, and quarter-to-quarter revenue is down by 16 percent. Its quarterly operating income also took a dive, as revenue slowed and R&D costs went up. On the bright side, it shared that its $1.79 billion year-to-year revenue is up 40 percent compared to this time in 2020. It attributes this big jump to its computing and graphics segments, including its Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics cards — both of which have gotten major updates recently.
The company didn’t initially come right out and say that the COVID-19 pandemic was the culprit to its less-than-favorable financial results, but it did during the investor call. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su cited that reduced supply chains and a downturn of retail in China during the first quarter contributed to lower numbers. To that end, AMD says it expects weak consumer demand in the second half of 2020, though it still expects its yearly revenue to grow by 25 percent.
Even as it works to find balance in 2020, AMD has a promising outlook for the rest of 2020, at least when it comes to its showcase of products. It beat Intel to the punch by being the first to make 7nm processors, which include its Ryzen U and H 4000-series processors based on Zen 2 architecture. Its Radeon RX 5000-series graphics cards currently undercut Nvidia’s RTX 20-series graphics cards in cost, with negligible differences in terms of performance in some cases. And, with their PCIe 4.0 support, they’re a little more future-proof on a technical level than Nvidia’s current GPU lineup. AMD’s GPUs also continue to get good support from Apple, both in its laptops and desktops, including the new high-end Mac Pro. Dr. Lisa Su says that its next-generation processors and graphics cards are still on-track for later in 2020.
Additionally, the company has been working alongside Microsoft and Sony in developing both the processors and graphics chips for their forthcoming next-generation video game consoles, the Xbox Series X and PS5, both of which are still set to release during the 2020 holiday season. Those will likely be huge sellers, though the numbers may not be as large as expected since Sony recently shared it will limit its initial shipment of PS5 consoles.