Rising Ryzen sales help AMD revenues rise 19 per cent to $1.22bn in second quarter

Rising Ryzen sales aids recovery at AMD

AMD has seen revenues increase by 19 per cent in its second quarter financial results, partly driven by the successful launch of its Ryzen range of microprocessors.

Although the company posted a loss of $16m for the three months to the end of June, AMD saw revenues increase to $1.22bn.

This is partly thanks to AMD's computing and graphics unit, which includes sales from the firm's Ryzen desktop chips, which delivered second quarter sales of $659m, an increase of 51 per cent, year-on-year.

However, the company's operating income weighed in at just $7m. This time last year, AMD reported $435m in revenues from the division and losses of $81m.

"Our second quarter results demonstrate strong growth driven by leadership products and focused execution," said AMD CEO Lisa Su.

"Our Ryzen desktop processors, Vega GPUs, and Epyc data centre products have received tremendous industry recognition. We are very pleased with our improved financial performance, including double digit revenue growth and year-over-year gross margin expansion on the strength of our new products."

On Tuesday's earnings call, Su also addressed the well-documented and ongoing shortage of graphics cards, which are being snapped up by cryptocurrency miners. She said that she doesn't see it as a long term problem, noting that AMD will ramp up production to combat the shortage in the short term.

AMD's enterprise, embedded and semi-custom unit, which includes royalties made from console and server chips, saw revenue fall five per cent to $563m in the second quarter. This likely will ramp up going forward with Microsoft set to start shipping its Xbox One X console in November.

Looking forward, AMD expects that it will report 23 per cent sequential growth in revenue in the third quarter. "When we look at where we are, in the progression of the Ryzen rollout, we're still in the early innings," Su said.

This positive forecast isn't surprising. During the third quarter, AMD expects sales of its Ryzen microprocessors to continue increasing - especially with the imminent launch of the bargain basement Ryzen 3 - as well its Epyc server chips and recently-launched Vega graphics cards.