AMD’s data-centre sales nearly doubled. Next year’s figure is a sentence on a call, not the written guidance

The written results are the part that can be checked. AMD said on 3 November that third-quarter revenue was $13.4 billion, up 45 per cent on the year. GAAP diluted earnings were $1.46 a share. Non-GAAP diluted earnings were $2.09, and Jean Hu, the finance chief, said that non-GAAP figure grew 74 per cent. GAAP operating income was $2.8 billion and net income $2.4 billion. On the company’s adjusted basis those are $3.9 billion and $3.5 billion. Data-centre revenue was a record $8.5 billion, up 97 per cent, which is about 64 per cent of the quarter. Client and gaming together were $3.7 billion, down 8 per cent. Lisa Su called it a record quarter, with data-centre sales nearly doubling, and said demand for Instinct and EPYC continued to strengthen.

The release ties that demand to a product, not to a forecast. It says the data-centre growth was driven by EPYC processors and the launch of Instinct MI450 GPUs. It describes Helios racks, with those GPUs and a sixth-generation EPYC, and names Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as running models on them. It also says the first Helios systems from HPE have been deployed at Vultr. A name on a customer list is not a disclosed dollar of that customer’s order. The fourth-quarter outlook in the release is revenue of about $17 billion, plus or minus 3 per cent, about 66 per cent above the year-earlier quarter, with an adjusted gross margin of about 55 per cent. That is the guidance. A street estimate is not in it.

What the call added, and what it did not

The Verge, reporting the call, says Su expects revenue to grow more than 80 per cent in 2027, and that Hu said the data-centre business would then be more than 80 per cent of the company. Those sentences are not in the written outlook, which stops at the fourth quarter. AMD’s account of the quarter also says the company has agreed to acquire World Labs and Taalas. It does not, in the figures above, say either deal has closed. What was also in circulation the next day, and is not in the release, is a claim that data-centre AI revenue will surpass server-processor revenue in the fourth quarter. The release does not split the $8.5 billion that way. A segment that nearly doubled is a fact. A crossover inside it is not, until the company prints one.