AMD on Tuesday reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2023 as well as for the whole fiscal year. The company posted a strong end to the year as its data center GPU business rose on increased demand from the AI craze. However, the company posted a lower-than-expected guide, so its shares tumbled 6% in after-hours trading. An interesting wrinkle here is that the company expects to sell $3.5 billion worth of its MI300-series AI GPUs in 2024, though it says it will not be supply-constrained, which essentially means that demand for the new GPU is at least somewhat limited as it ramps — Nvidia, whose AI GPUs are in a constant state of shortage due to incredible demand, is said to have a 52-week wait time for a new GPU, so many would have expected AMD to have a similar problem. Regardless, AMD says that its MI300 sales are on pace to be the fastest revenue ramp of any product in the company's history as it increased its projected sales from a previous $2 billion estimate to $3.5 billion.
AMD also posted a lower-than-expected guide, saying that its Q1 revenues from the client, embedded, and gaming segments are projected to decrease sequentially. In particular, revenue from semi-custom products (which mainly consist of console SoCs) is expected to experience a substantial double-digit percentage drop of "more than 30%." The company also forecasts that its data center segment revenue will remain flat in Q1 compared to the previous quarter, as a seasonal dip in server sales is likely to be offset by a robust increase in AI and HPC GPU sales, namely the Instinct MI300-series products.
