(Bloomberg) -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. slid 11% Wednesday after the chipmaker’s revenue outlook fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, signaling that its artificial intelligence sales are growing slower than some had anticipated.
Revenue will be roughly $7.5 billion in the fourth quarter, the company said Tuesday. Analysts estimated $7.55 billion on average. Though the company now expects to get more than $5 billion in sales from so-called AI accelerators this year — up from a previous forecast of $4.5 billion — some investors had been looking for a bigger bump.
AMD is playing catch-up with Nvidia Corp. in the lucrative market for these chips, which help develop and run AI services. AMD is now generating billions of dollars from that type of product — a rapid rise from a year ago — but the level remains well short of the tens of billions of dollars that its rival is raking in.
On a conference call following the results, Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su pushed back on concerns that AMD isn’t delivering enough growth. The company is ramping up production and earning the trust of the large data center companies that rely on AI accelerators, she said.
“What I will say is customers are very, very open to AMD,” Su said. “And we see that everywhere we go. Everyone is giving us a very fair shot at earning their business, and that’s what we intend to do.”
AMD shares fell to $148.60 in New York on Wednesday, the worst single-day decline since October 2022. They had been up 13% this year before the rout.
AMD’s third-quarter revenue rose 18% to $6.82 billion, beating an average estimate of $6.71 billion. Profit, minus certain items, increased to 92 cents a share, in line with projections.
AMD’s new MI300 accelerator products, which compete with Nvidia chips, have emerged as one of its biggest sales engines. But the growth has been hampered by the availability of supply. Like most companies in the industry, AMD no longer owns its own plants, opting instead to outsource production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The company has made progress in getting more supply from its vendors, but still expects to have little latitude in terms of meeting demand if it’s above current projections, Su said on the call.
“I think we expect that the environment will continue to be tight, but we’ve also planned for significant growth going into 2025,” Su said. “We feel good about our overall supply-chain capability.”
Investors track AMD’s performance as an indicator of overall demand for AI-related hardware. Massive spending by companies such as Amazon.com Inc.’s AWS and Microsoft Corp. on this still-new type of computing infrastructure has upended the industry. The concern among investors is that AI services aren’t yet big moneymakers, which may make it harder for companies to continue justifying the expense of buying the chips.
In addition to being Nvidia’s biggest rival in AI accelerators, AMD also competes with that company in graphics chips used by computer gamers. And it goes head-to-head with Intel Corp. in personal computer and server processors.
AMD’s data-center unit had sales of $3.5 billion last quarter, more than double the total from a year earlier and slightly above estimates. PC chips brought in $1.88 billion, up 29%.
AMD also supplies custom processors for Microsoft and Sony Group Corp. for their game consoles. That unit has seen weaker sales, hurt by the current generation of game machines nearing the end of their life cycles. Revenue fell 69% to $462 million, missing estimates.
AMD also predicted a fourth-quarter adjusted gross margin — the percentage of sales remaining after deducting the cost of production — that was just shy of projections.
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