• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia
Tech

Why AMD’s Stock Plunged 20% in Less Than a Week

By
Aaron Pressman
Aaron Pressman
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Aaron Pressman
Aaron Pressman
Down Arrow Button Icon
October 30, 2017, 11:14 AM ET

Advanced Micro Devices has spent 2017 rolling out its new family of Ryzen chips for desktops and laptops, Epyc chips for servers, and Vega graphics cards. The fruits of several years of crash development under CEO Lisa Su, the new chips were supposed to get AMD back in the game against Intel (INTC) and Nvidia (NVDA) and regain some of its once significant market share that had been frittered away over the past decade.

But with basically all the new products now on the market, AMD’s stock price on Monday sunk as low as $11.07, below where it ended 2016 at $11.34. Monday’s plunge capped a four day, 20% drop since AMD (AMD) reported third quarter earnings on October 24, failing to show the kind of sales growth that Wall Street had expected would be more obvious by now. Over the same period, Intel has gained 9% on the strength of its third quarter earnings while Nvidia, which doesn’t report earnings until November 9, is up 3%.

The problem, at least so far, seems to be slower sales to video game enthusiasts, as the Ryzen desktop chips lagged some of Intel’s fastest silicon for popular games and the Vega graphics architecture was costly to produce, blunting AMD’s ability to compete on price with Nvidia’s graphics cards.

“While Ryzen did meet the performance benchmarks that AMD claimed, making it a solid choice for workstations using highly threaded applications, the single threaded gaming performance has underwhelmed,” Morgan Stanley analyst Joe Moore wrote in a report on Monday downgrading the stock to “underweight” with an $8 price target.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

“Building a chip that outperforms Intel for highly threaded applications on a budget that is a fraction’s of Intel is certainly an impressive engineering achievement, but most high-end consumer purchases are oriented towards gaming, while applications that value higher multicore performance tend to be in corporate markets that are slower to adopt AMD,” Moore explained.

AMD’s third quarter sales grew 26% to $1.6 billion and the company reported net income of $71 million—its first real profits since 2014. AMD did not, however, raise its forecast for fourth quarter sales and profit as much as some investors hoped, igniting the recent sell-off.

Still, one of AMD’s most potent new products, chips for laptops that combine Ryzen and Vega designs, have only just been announced. A few laptop makers have announced they will use the combo chips this year, but the bulk of manufacturers won’t until early 2018.

(Update: This story was updated on October 31 to correct that AMD third quarter sales totaled $1.6 billion.)

About the Author
By Aaron Pressman
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • Future 50
  • World’s Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Diversity And Inclusion
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Diversity And Inclusion
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

AIOpenAI
OpenAI plans to almost double its headcount this year, FT says
By Liza Tetley and BloombergMarch 21, 2026
2 hours ago
Politicsarms, weapons, and defense
The U.S. has the world’s most advanced military, but the unforgiving economics of wars in Iran and Ukraine show quantity has a quality all its own 
By Jason MaMarch 21, 2026
3 hours ago
AIAI agents
OpenAI cofounder says he hasn’t written a line of code in months and is in a ‘state of psychosis’ trying to figure out what’s possible
By Jason MaMarch 21, 2026
7 hours ago
david
CommentaryScience
The one skill that separates people who get smarter with AI from everyone else
By David Rock and Chris WellerMarch 21, 2026
12 hours ago
Geoffrey Hinton standing in front of a white and grey background.
AITech
‘Godfather of AI’ says tech companies aren’t concerned with the AI endgame. They’re focused on short-term profits instead
By Sasha RogelbergMarch 21, 2026
13 hours ago
MagazineCoding
Cursor’s crossroads: The rapid rise, and very uncertain future, of a $30 billion AI startup
By Allie GarfinkleMarch 21, 2026
13 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.