Susquehanna Analyst Talks About New AMD Q4 Report and How the Crypto Winter Can Hurt Projections

Advance Micro Devices (AMD) has not quite finished their fourth quarterly report for the end of 2018, though they’ve managed the expectations of the dwindling crypto miners fairly well. However, even with their preparedness, analysts believe that the company will suffer from the “crypto hangover,” putting a dent in their report.

This report is not expected to come out until after the markets close, which will be on Tuesday next week.

Christopher Rolland, a financial analyst at Susquehanna, commented that the way that they have reduced the cost of the graphics processing units (GPUs) could pose a problem.

The Radeon RX580 GPU has been a popular option for crypto miners and was originally brought to the inventory at AMD for $550 in February. However, it has now been lowered by 67%, bringing it down to $180. Matthew Ramsay, who works as an analyst for Cohen, said,

“Following a messy Q3 that saw a material impact from near-term GPU channel sell-in challenges, we believe inventory impacts could linger to start the year, and model Q1 2019 slightly below consensus.”

The CEO of AMD, Lisa Su, had little to say about the correlation. However, she was realistic in the estimate on how the brand will bounce back. Su said,

“Client and server processor sales increased significantly, although graphics channel sales were lower in the quarter. We are expecting that it might take a couple quarters to completely get back to a normal channel.

Another major GPU producer, Nvidia, had a rough time in the middle of the bear market last year. After losing their high revenue as a result of the low market prices, the company lost nearly all crypto-related sales.

In Q4 2018, there were major selloffs seen of their shares on the public market, which made it the absolute worst performer of the S&P 500, as they watched their stock plummet by 54%.