Advanced Micro Devices Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
February 1, 2022

Key Takeaways

  • 2021 annual revenue was a record $16.4 billion, up 68% from 2020, with gross margins expanding for the sixth consecutive year and net income and EPS more than doubling.
  • In Q4, revenue reached $4.8 billion, a 49% year-over-year increase and the sixth straight quarter of over 45% growth, while non-GAAP gross margin expanded by 560 basis points to 50%.
  • The Computing and Graphics segment grew 32% year-over-year driven by Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs, with record notebook sales, seventh consecutive quarter of client processor share gains, and continued RDNA2 GPU momentum.
  • Data center revenue more than doubled year-over-year supported by over 130 new AMD-powered cloud instances, the ramp of third-gen EPYC platforms, and previews of next-gen Genoa and Bergamo processors, making data center about 20% of overall revenue.
  • Q1 2022 revenue is guided to $5 billion ±$0.1 billion (up ~45% y/y, +4% q/q) and full-year revenue to $21.5 billion (+31%), and AMD expects to close its Xilinx acquisition in Q1 for expanded technology and customer synergies.
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Earnings Conference Call
Advanced Micro Devices Q4 2021
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Operator

Hello, and welcome to the AMD fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please Press Star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Laura Graves, Corporate Vice President of Investor Relations. Laura, please go ahead.

Laura Graves
Laura Graves
Corporate VP of Investor Relations at AMD

Thank you, and welcome to AMD's fourth quarter and fiscal year-end 2021 financial results conference call. By now, you should have had the opportunity to review a copy of our earnings release and accompanying slideware. If you have not reviewed these documents yet, they can be found on the investor relations page of amd.com. Participants on today's conference call are Dr. Lisa Su, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Devinder Kumar, our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. This is a live call and will be replayed via webcast on our website. Before we begin, I would like to note that Dan McNamara, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Server, will attend the virtual Susquehanna Financial Group 11th Annual Technology Conference on Thursday, 3rd March.

Laura Graves
Laura Graves
Corporate VP of Investor Relations at AMD

Our Q1 2022 quiet period is expected to begin at the close of business on Friday, 11st March, and AMD will host its 2022 Financial Analyst Day on Thursday, 9th June . Today's discussions contain forward-looking statements based on current beliefs, assumptions, and expectations, speak only as of today, and as such, involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Please refer to the cautionary statement in our press release for more information on factors that could cause the results to differ. We will refer primarily to non-GAAP financial measures during this call. The full non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliations are available in today's press release and the slides posted on our website. Now with that, I will hand the call over to Lisa. Lisa?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thank you, Laura, and good afternoon to all those listening in today. 2021 was an outstanding year for AMD as we exceeded our aggressive growth goals and delivered another record year. Each of our businesses grew significantly and set new annual revenue records, highlighted by Data Center revenue more than doubling year-over-year. Annual revenue grew 68% to a record $16.4 billion, and we expanded gross margin for the sixth straight year. We also delivered record net income in EPS, both of which more than doubled year-over-year. Looking at the fourth quarter, we ended the year exceptionally strong with our sixth straight quarter of greater than 45% year-over-year revenue growth. Fourth quarter revenue grew 49% from a year ago to a record $4.8 billion.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

We expanded gross margin by more than five percentage points and doubled operating income year-over-year. Turning to our Computing and Graphics segment, revenue increased 32% year-over-year to $2.6 billion, driven by growth in both Ryzen and Radeon processor sales. Record client computing revenue grew by a double-digit percentage from a year ago, led by record notebook sales. We saw strong demand for premium AMD notebooks and our higher-end desktop CPUs in the quarter as Ryzen 5000 processor unit shipments grew by a double-digit percentage sequentially. As a result, we believe we gained client processor revenue share for the seventh straight quarter. We launched our Ryzen 6000 series notebook CPUs at CES last month, featuring our new Zen 3+ core that further extends the leadership compute, gaming, and battery life capabilities of our mobile processors.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

We increased the number of premium gaming and commercial design wins from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and other major PC providers to more than 200, including more than 20 AMD Advantage notebooks that combine Ryzen CPUs, Radeon GPUs, and Radeon software to deliver the ultimate gaming experience. We also provided the first public demonstration of our upcoming Ryzen 7000 desktop processors at CES. Ryzen 7000 series desktop CPUs provide a significant performance increase compared to our current Ryzen processors by combining our high-performance 5 nm Zen 4 core with our next generation memory and IO technologies in the new AM5 socket. There's a lot of excitement in the market for our next gen Ryzen desktop processors, and we're on track to launch in the second half of 2022. In graphics, revenue more than doubled year-over-year for the third straight quarter.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Radeon 6000 series GPU unit shipments and revenue both grew by double-digit percentages sequentially, led by strong demand across our RDNA 2 desktop family. At CES, we announced that we expanded our Radeon 6000 series GPU portfolio with our first mainstream RDNA 2 desktop GPU, priced at $199. We also introduced new mobile GPUs that deliver up to 20% more performance than our prior generation and our first mobile graphics chips for thin and light gaming notebooks.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Data center graphics revenue more than doubled year-over-year, driven largely by HPC wins for our latest Instinct MI200 accelerators. We are seeing growing customer engagements for our data center GPUs based on the leadership AI and HPC performance of our new MI200 accelerators, highlighted by multiple supercomputing wins and an extended set of platforms on track to launch from Atos, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Supermicro, and others starting later this quarter. Turning to our enterprise embedded and semi-custom segment, revenue increased 75% year-over-year to $2.2 billion, driven by record EPYC processor and semi-custom sales. Semi-custom sales increased year-over-year as the current game console cycle continues outpacing all prior generations. We expect revenue to grow this year, driven by continued strong demand for the latest Microsoft and Sony consoles. Turning to server, we had another outstanding quarter.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Revenue more than doubled year-over-year and increased by a double-digit percentage sequentially, driven by demand across both cloud and enterprise customers. In cloud, revenue more than doubled year-over-year as the largest providers expanded internal deployments and more than 130 new AMD powered instances launched from Amazon Web Services, Alibaba, Google, IBM, Microsoft Azure, and others. Microsoft Azure previewed a new HPC instance powered by our third gen EPYC processors with 3D stacked memory that delivers up to 80% more performance than currently available instances. Our differentiated 3D stacking technology further extends the leadership performance of EPYC processors in technical computing workloads like EDA, fluid dynamics, and complex simulations. We started volume production of EPYC processors with 3D stacked memory earlier this quarter in advance of OEM platform launches with all our major server partners.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

In enterprise, revenue doubled year-over-year, driven by the ongoing ramp of more than 100 third gen EPYC platforms available from Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, Supermicro, Cisco, and others. In HPC, EPYC processor adoption was highlighted by the number of AMD-powered supercomputers on the November TOP500 fastest supercomputers list, tripling year-over-year to 73. EPYC processors also dominated the Green500 list and are now powering eight of the top 10 most efficient supercomputers in the world. Turning to our overall data center business, we made outstanding progress in the last year. We exited 2021 with data center revenue contributing a mid-20% of overall revenue, and we expect 2022 to be another year of significant growth based on the strong customer demand signals for our current and next generation products.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

In November, we provided first details of our next generation EPYC processor, code-named Genoa, that will feature up to 96 Zen 4 cores and next generation memory and I/O technologies, including breakthrough memory expansion capabilities. Customer excitement for Genoa is extremely high as it extends our performance leadership across a broad range of workloads. We also announced the addition of Bergamo to our server roadmap, featuring a version of our Zen 4 core called Zen 4c that has been specifically optimized for cloud-native computing. Bergamo is a high core count, power efficient CPU that can be used in the same platforms as Genoa. It will feature up to 128 CPU cores and deliver significant performance and power efficiency advantages for cloud workloads.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

We are sampling Genoa processors to customers now and are on track to launch later this year, with Bergamo shipments planned to follow in the first half of 2023. Turning to our Xilinx acquisition, we were pleased to announce that China's State Administration for Market Regulation approved the transaction on 27th January. The only remaining regulatory approval required is FTC approval of our HSR refiling, and we expect to close the transaction in the first quarter of 2022. I am more excited than ever about the benefits of the acquisition for both AMD and Xilinx stakeholders. Customer excitement is also high as they look forward to the opportunity to deepen their strategic engagements with AMD based on our expanded technology and solutions portfolio. In summary, I am incredibly proud of our performance in 2021.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Our record annual results highlight our strong execution over multiple years to establish the technical, operational, and strategic foundation to position AMD as a high-performance computing leader. Each of our businesses performed extremely well in 2021, with growth significantly ahead of the long-term financial model we outlined at our Financial Analyst Day in 2020. I want to take a moment to recognize and thank the AMD employees whose passion, dedication, and execution have enabled this success. Turning to 2022, demand for our products is very strong, and we look forward to another year of significant growth and share gains as we ramp our current products and launch our next wave of Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA 3 GPUs. We have also made significant investments to secure the capacity needed to support our growth in 2022 and beyond.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Looking out over the long term, we are confident in our ability to continue growing significantly faster than the market based on our expanded roadmap investments. The deep relationships we have established with a broad set of customers who view AMD as a strategic enabler of their success. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Devinder to provide some additional color on our fourth quarter and full year financial performance. Devinder?

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

Thank you, Lisa, and good afternoon, everyone. We had a very strong 2021, with increased demand for our products. Excellent execution resulted in record annual revenue, continued gross margin expansion, record profitability, and significant cash flow generation. Fourth quarter 2021 revenue of $4.8 billion was our sixth consecutive quarterly record, up 49% from a year ago, driven by strong revenue increases across all businesses. Gross margin was 50%, up 560 basis points from a year ago, driven by a richer mix of products and data center revenue growth. Operating expenses were $1.1 billion compared to $789 million a year ago, as we increased investments in our long-term product roadmaps to support the significant growth trajectory of our business.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

Operating income doubled from a year ago to a record $1.3 billion, up $665 million, primarily driven by significant revenue growth and higher gross margin. Operating margin was 27%, up from 20% a year ago. Net income was a record $1.1 billion, up $486 million from a year ago. Diluted earnings per share was $0.92 compared to $0.52 per share a year ago. This includes a 15% effective tax rate compared to a 3% rate a year ago. Now turning to fourth quarter business segment results. Computing and Graphics segment revenue was $2.6 billion, up 32% year-over-year, driven by higher graphics and client processor revenue.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

Computing and Graphics segment operating income was $566 million, or 22% of revenue, compared to $420 million a year ago. The increase in operating income was driven primarily by higher revenue, partially offset by higher operating expenses. Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom segment revenue was $2.2 billion, up 75% from $1.3 billion the prior year. The strong revenue increase was driven by significantly higher EPYC processor and semi-custom sales. EESC segment operating income grew significantly to $762 million, or 34% of revenue, compared to $243 million, or 19% a year ago. Operating income growth was driven primarily by higher revenue and richer product mix, partially offset by higher R&D and go-to-market expenses. Turning to the balance sheet. Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments were $3.6 billion at year-end.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

As we continue returning capital to shareholders, we repurchased $756 million of common stock in the fourth quarter and closed out the year with $1.8 billion of repurchases. Additionally, we have repurchased $1 billion to date in the first quarter of 2022 and have $1.2 billion remaining under the authorized $4 billion share repurchase plan. Quarterly free cash flow was $736 million, compared to $480 million in the same quarter last year and $764 million in the prior quarter. Inventory was $2 billion, up $53 million from the prior quarter. Now let me turn to our full year financial results. 2021 revenue was $16.4 billion, up 68% year-on-year, driven by strong growth across all businesses.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

Gross margin was 48%, up 370 basis points from the prior year, driven by the strength and competitiveness of our EPYC, Radeon, and Ryzen processors. Operating expenses were 24% of revenue, compared to 28% in 2020. 2021 operating income was up 146% from a year ago to $4.1 billion, resulting in an operating margin of 25%, compared to 17% in 2020. Net income was $3.4 billion, up 118% from the prior year. Full year free cash flow was a record $3.2 billion, resulting in free cash flow margin of 20% for the year. In addition, we invested approximately $1 billion during 2021 in long-term supply chain capacity to support our expectations for future revenue and market share growth.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

Let me now turn to our financial outlook. Today's outlook is based on current expectations and contemplates the current global supply environment and customer signals and does not contemplate the addition of Xilinx, as that transaction has not yet closed. Q1 2022 revenue is expected to be approximately $5 billion ± $100 million, an increase of approximately 45% year-over-year and approximately 4% quarter-on-quarter. The year-over-year increase is expected to be driven by growth across all businesses. The quarter-on-quarter increase is expected to be driven by higher server and client revenue. In addition, for Q1 2022, we expect non-GAAP gross margin to be approximately 50.5%. Non-GAAP operating expenses to be approximately $1.2 billion. Non-GAAP interest expense, taxes, and other to be approximately $207 million based on a 15% effective tax rate.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

The diluted share count to be approximately 1.22 billion shares. For the full year 2022, we expect revenue to be approximately $21.5 billion, an increase of approximately 31%, driven by growth across all businesses. We expect non-GAAP gross margin to be approximately 51%. Non-GAAP operating expenses to be approximately 24% of revenue. Non-GAAP effective tax rate to be 15%, and non-GAAP cash tax rate to be approximately 9%, due primarily to the U.S. tax requirement to capitalize R&D and the full utilization of our U.S. net operating losses and tax credits in 2022. In closing, we had an outstanding quarter and an excellent year with very strong revenue growth and numerous financial records. As we enter 2022, our leadership products and growing customer momentum continue to position us very well for long-term growth.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

I look forward to AMD delivering another year of very strong financial performance. With that, I'll turn it back to Laura for the question and answer session. Laura?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thank you, Devinder, and thank you, Lisa. Operator, we're ready for our first question.

Operator

Certainly. We'll now be conducting your question-and-answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Aaron Rakers from Wells Fargo. Your line is now live.

Aaron Rakers
Aaron Rakers
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wells Fargo

Yeah. Thanks for taking the question, and congratulations on the quarter. Just thinking about the full year, you know, guidance. I know that you had mentioned in your prepared remarks that you expect the semi-custom segment to grow. I'm curious if you could help us maybe appreciate how you're thinking about the semi-custom segment relative to the server segment and whether or not that 30% contribution from total data center still applies for 2023, the outlook that you had provided at the last Analyst Day, or you think that what we're tracking above that trend. Thank you.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Sure, Aaron, thanks for the question. For 2022, I mean, our current view is that we'll see growth in all of our businesses. You know, we see strong demand for our products, as well as, you know, we have increased supply capability, given what we've done with our partners. Relative to the growth from the different businesses, the growth will be led by server. From what we see from customers and you know sort of design wins and platforms and all that, you know, server will be very strong next year. We also expect growth from our other businesses, including consoles, our PC business, our graphics business and our embedded business.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

We expect the percentage of data center to continue to increase as we go into next year, and you know, we'll give more on that as we go through the year.

Aaron Rakers
Aaron Rakers
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wells Fargo

Thank you.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thanks, Aaron.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Matt Ramsay from Cowen and Company. Your line is now live.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

Thank you very much. Good afternoon for the whole team, but Lisa, congrats on getting close on Xilinx. Excited to see what that brings, and obviously the strong results. One of the questions I'm getting tonight is, with such a strong start, greater than 30% guidance for revenue in 2022, can you just kinda walk us through, maybe with a little more specificity, some of the things that you've done in the supply chain around substrate, around back-end test and package, around wafer demand, and just to give people comfort that there's coverage there and visibility and the potential for upside, particularly as you take server and desktop onto 5 nm. I imagine 7 nm capacity won't go away. It'll stay as that new capacity comes online.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

I just wanna make sure I understand all the variables around the confidence in supply. Thanks.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah. Absolutely, Matt. Thanks for the question. You know, we've been working on, you know, sort of, the supply chain, really for the last four or five quarters, you know, knowing the growth that we have from a product standpoint and, you know, the visibility that we have from customers. In regards to your question on 2022 supply environment, we've made significant investments in, you know, wafer capacity, as well as substrate capacity and back-end capacity. We feel very good about our progress in the supply chain to meet the 2022 guidance. You know, our goal is frankly to have enough supply to satisfy the demand out there.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

You know, our view is we're gonna continue to work with our partners and our customers to ensure that we know what they need. You know, likewise, you know, our capacity investments are for 2022, but also beyond 2022. 'Cause, you know, as the business grows, we need to continue to forecast and make plans for that, and that's what we've been working on.

Matt Ramsay
Matt Ramsay
Analyst at Cowen and Company

Very good. Thanks for that. Just as a follow-up.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

I've been hearing more and more, and as you guys roll out the 5-nm portfolio, many of those products in server and in desktop will include next generation Infinity Fabric. It's been a conversation for a while about what you guys have branded sort of A+A AMD CPU and GPU together. I wonder, as you look out over the next several quarters, Lisa, how would you characterize that combination in importance to your company strategy and the growth? Thanks.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah. Well, we're very excited about our 5nm products. I think Zen 4, you know, is very critical. It's a focus for this year, for both our, you know, server roadmap as well as our client roadmap. The work with the Infinity Fabric really is just on top of that and allows us to, you know, continue to optimize, you know, sort of the AMD CPU and GPU ecosystem together. Whether on the data center side, with our data center GPU products, you know, working with EPYC in high-performance computing or on the PC side, when we have our AMD APUs plus our discrete graphics, you know, plus the software on top.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

It is an important, very important element of our strategy. It just goes to continuing to, you know, differentiate with the overall portfolio as we go into these new platforms.

Laura Graves
Laura Graves
Corporate VP of Investor Relations at AMD

Thank you, Matt.

Matt Ramsay
Matt Ramsay
Analyst at Cowen and Company

Thank you.

Laura Graves
Laura Graves
Corporate VP of Investor Relations at AMD

Operator, next question, please.

Operator

Certainly. Our next question is coming from Ross Seymore from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live.

Ross Seymore
Ross Seymore
Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Hi. Thanks for letting me ask a question. Congrats on the strong results and the strong guide. Lisa, I just want to talk about the computing segment, the client computing side. At least in my model, that was a significant portion of the upside in the quarter after, I believe last quarter you talked about not wanting to fill the channel and make sure you shipped according to demand. In the near term, what changed? And perhaps more importantly, as you look into 2022, it appears that you're planning for significant share gains to continue in that sector. Can you talk a little bit about what gives the confidence for that share gain, please?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Sure, Ross. You know, your question about the computing and graphics segment. Look, you know, our focus in this segment is to be very closely aligned with our customers and what they're doing in the market. We've been monitoring, you know, sell in and sell out and sell through trends very carefully. I think the strength that we saw in the fourth quarter was very much a result of, you know, sort of the product strength. You know, we saw very nice notebook demand continuing at the premium part of the market in commercial, gaming, premium ultra-thins.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

We, you know, we believe that, you know, the PC performance was, you know, a bit above our original guidance, but, you know, we believe that was to match end user demand. Going into 2022, you know, again, same story. I think, you know, what we see is, you know, 2021 was a strong year for PCs. Overall, you know, the industry shipped, you know, approximately 350 million units. I think our view is that, 2022 will be roughly flattish from a unit standpoint. But we will see some mix, you know, changes in there with, you know, enterprise and premium being stronger than, for example, low-end and education.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

You know, from our standpoint, it's revenue share that we believe we can gain. It's the strength of our Ryzen 6000 series that we just launched at CES. We have you know 200 platforms from all of the OEM customers. You know, we have you know pretty good visibility in working with our customers on that. I think we feel good about it, you know. Again, the client business is one of you know all of our businesses you know will grow. I like that diversity, frankly, in the portfolio.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

We feel good about the progress we've made in PCs and, you know, we'll continue to ensure that we're matching sell in with sell out so that there is not inventory build in the business.

Ross Seymore
Ross Seymore
Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Thanks for all that color. Maybe a quick follow-up on the pricing side of the equation. You talked about getting enough supply to grow the impressive targets that you guys have for the year. Conceptually and strategically, how do you think about pricing? Is that something you pass along? Is it a tailwind to gross margin? I don't know if you'd give any sort of precision, but out of the 30%+ that you're guiding to for the fiscal year, roughly, how do we think about pricing as a tailwind within that?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah. Well, you know, I would say the way to think about pricing is, you know, the industry has seen, you know, some price increases across the supply chain. You know, that's as to be expected given the amount of capacity that we're all putting on to satisfy, you know, this strong demand. You know, we're always in this for the long term and, you know, working with our supply chain partners as well as our customers to ensure that we find a way to kind of share the additional costs. You know, our focus is ensuring that we have the supply to meet the high demand.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

I think what you're seeing is, you know, growth in the model from the standpoint that, you know, we've always kind of said we're underrepresented in the business. You know, when you look even today with all of our growth, we're still underrepresented in the business, whether you're talking about, you know, the server business or the PC business. We believe that our product strength and our, you know, customer engagements are such that we can grow significantly in this environment.

Ross Seymore
Ross Seymore
Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Thank you.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thanks, Ross.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Vivek Arya from Bank of America. Your line is now live.

Vivek Arya
Vivek Arya
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Bank of America

Thanks for taking my question. Lisa, I wanted to get your thoughts on the competitive landscape in the server market this year versus last. You know, your competitor Intel is launching their Sapphire Rapids platform. They seem to be very excited about that. You know, they're adding a lot of capacity in their fabs. Enterprise spending, which has tended to favor them in the past, right, is also coming back. I'm just curious, how are you thinking about AMD's ability to gain more share in servers this year?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, Vivek. Look, we always expect the competitive environment to be you know very strong and very aggressive, and that's the way we plan our business. That being the case, I think we're you know very happy with the growth that we've seen in the business you know sort of last year. As we look forward, you know, we see opportunities in both cloud and enterprise. You know, on the cloud side, you know, we're in 10 of the largest hyperscalers in the world are using AMD. As they get familiar with us over multiple generations, they're expanding the workloads that they're using AMD on, so we see that across internal and external workloads.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

In the enterprise segment, you know, we doubled year over year here in 2021. We continue to add more field support to have more people get familiar with our architecture. We have very strong OEM relationships. I feel very good about our server trajectory and, you know, yes, it's very competitive out there, but, you know, we think the data center business is a secular growth business and within that, we can grow significantly faster than the market.

Vivek Arya
Vivek Arya
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Bank of America

Got it. For my follow-up, Lisa, you know, the semiconductor industry just went through a very tough time last year and even into this year, given all the supply shortages. I'm curious, what has that done to help you build, you know, stronger relationships with your customers who are perhaps looking for a more consistent execution on the roadmap and more reliable sources of supply? How has the, you know, the shortage environment in semis changed the way customers are looking at AMD today than, you know, how they used to look at you historically?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, I think, Vivek, the most important thing that we are, you know, sort of working on with our customers is really consistent execution. When you look at, you know, the last year and sort of some of the supply-demand imbalance, you know, it has actually caused us to work much more closely with our customers. I think we're talking about visibility now, you know, multiple quarters, and in some cases, multiple years out. For the type of capacity that we're talking about, for the size of the customers that we're talking to, you know, we need to do that to plan, to have the capability to support all of that capability.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Overall, I think we have definitely deepened the relationships with customers. By the way, also, we've deepened the relationships with our supply chain partners. I think the entire supply chain needs to come together to deliver on the very strong demand that's out there. You know, that's certainly what we've been working on.

Vivek Arya
Vivek Arya
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Bank of America

Thanks.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thanks, Vivek.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Toshiya Hari from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.

Toshiya Hari
Toshiya Hari
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you. Congrats on the strong results, Lisa. I had two questions as well, one relatively short-term and one on Xilinx. The short-term question, just on Q1 revenue, you're obviously guiding total company revenue up on a sequential basis. Your nearest competitor talked about CPU inventory corrections in the quarter. Is that something that you're seeing in the market? And if so, is that contemplated in your guidance?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Sure, Toshiya. Thanks for the question. Our guide in Q1 actually is up sequentially. You know, usually we're down sequentially just given normal seasonality, but the demand patterns are such that demand is strong and we have additional supply coming on board, and so that's why we're guiding sequentially up. As it relates to CPU inventory, whether in PCs or in servers, we don't believe there is any significant inventory of our products, whether at our customers or sort of in the retail or channel.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

From that standpoint, you know, I think we've been watching very carefully the, you know, sell-in and sell-through patterns, and we believe we're matched to end user demand.

Toshiya Hari
Toshiya Hari
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Great. As my quick follow-up on Xilinx, you know, it's been a while since your initial announcement. I'm sure you've had, you know, quite a bit of back and forth with your customers. You've had time to monitor how they've been performing as a standalone company. You know, how has your view on the company and sort of the technology and the potential revenue synergies going forward evolved at all? I know, you know, you're still waiting to close this thing, so maybe, you know, you can't say too much, but just curious how your view on things have evolved as it relates to Xilinx. Thank you.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, absolutely. Look, I'm extremely excited about Xilinx. I mean, I would say that we very much have been, you know, planning for the integration over this period of time. You know, we've had customers anxious to talk to us about combined roadmaps. You know, when we think about sort of the technology that they have, it's very complementary to ours. Very, very strong team. Their business results were just posted last week, and their business is also doing very, very well. I think the combination is gonna be very exciting. We look forward to telling you a lot more about it as we get to close and beyond.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from John Pitzer from Credit Suisse. Your line is now live.

John Pitzer
John Pitzer
Managing Director at Credit Suisse

Yeah, good afternoon, guys. Lisa, thanks for letting me ask the question. Lisa, couple questions. First, I'm wondering if you could just help me better understand the fungibility of your capacity planning throughout the year, i.e., I understand that your view on the PC market this year is sort of flattish with a better mix and you gaining share. In the event that come mid-year, that were to change and perhaps be a little bit worse than thought, do you have the ability to rejigger your sort of supply chain to move towards server and CPU? How does that kinda math work?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, John. We've certainly worked very hard to give ourselves fungibility among the various capacity corridors that we have. We've done, you know, numerous cross-qualifications and new factory bring ups and all of that stuff. I would say it's not 100% fungible, but there, you know, it is. There is an ability to move across the different businesses. We make that a dynamic allocation decision, you know, sort of like weekly, you know, based on, you know, what we see going on. I think we have a pretty good pulse on the market. We, you know, sort of understand sort of what's going on and, you know, our customers are giving us signals on a regular basis.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

I think we'll be able to manage through, you know, at all of the puts and takes as we go through the year.

John Pitzer
John Pitzer
Managing Director at Credit Suisse

That's helpful. My second question, just on data center and GPU. Where does that factor into kind of your growth expectations for this year? Now that you've created sort of a strong beachhead of EPYC inside the data center, does that help the sales cycle at all to get more GPU penetration?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, sure. Data center GPU had a very strong year in 2021. It was, you know, sort of a key year for us as we launched the MI200 family, and we had several large supercomputing wins. This year for data center GPU is about the cloud and about sort of expanding beyond the large HPC wins. You know, I view it as a strategic growth vector for us over the next several years. I think your question is a good one about sort of the pull now that EPYC is very, you know, sort of well established in these accounts. I do think that, you know, that helps us with data center GPU.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

The way to think about it is, you know, this is a long-term investment for us. You know, the hardware is very, very good. We've been investing more in the software. We've been working with our customers to ensure that our tool chain, you know, gets them the performance that they need. You know, I would say this is a longer-term driver, but I'm pleased with the progress that we made, you know, certainly, you know, through this last year.

John Pitzer
John Pitzer
Managing Director at Credit Suisse

Thanks a lot.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Blayne Curtis from Barclays. Your line is now live.

Blayne Curtis
Blayne Curtis
Managing Director and Semiconductor Analyst at Barclays

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I was curious on the EPYC side, in the preamble, you have clearly strong trends in cloud, enterprise, and HPC. Just curious on the comm channel, you had a press release recently with Nokia. I know it's kinda early days, but any kinda comments you had in terms of your design progress there. It's kinda the last area that you haven't really penetrated servers.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, sure, Blayne. It's still very early, but yeah, we're very happy with the partnership with Nokia that was announced. You know, as you said, this is an area where you know, we're early in the cycle. It's an area where we're building relationships. You know, I feel you know, good about the progress there, but you know, I would say it's still quite early. You know, you didn't ask this, but just one of the other things you know, with the communications and 5G, you know, as we bring Xilinx into the equation, you know, they also have very deep relationships with a number of these accounts.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

You know, we see that as an incremental positive, as we think about EPYC in communications.

Blayne Curtis
Blayne Curtis
Managing Director and Semiconductor Analyst at Barclays

Thanks. Maybe for my follow-up, just on the March guidance. Semi-custom typically has a pretty seasonal decline. It's been anything but typical, and you had very strong trends, it seems like in the end of the year. I'm just kinda curious within that March guidance, if anything you can provide in terms of, you know, I'm assuming it's probably down, but I'm just kinda curious versus normal levels. If you could just dial us in anything, that would be helpful.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Sure. For the Q1 guide, you know, the sequential up is being driven primarily by server and then also by client. For semi-custom, it is normally significantly down, and this year it is flattish into the first quarter. It's as you said, the seasonal patterns aren't there. Demand continues to be strong and, you know, we continue to support our customers with additional, you know, product there.

Blayne Curtis
Blayne Curtis
Managing Director and Semiconductor Analyst at Barclays

Thanks, Lisa.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Stacy Rasgon from Bernstein Research. Your line is now live.

Stacy Rasgon
Stacy Rasgon
Managing Director at Bernstein Research

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I wanna revisit the pricing question. I don't think you quite answered it. I get the inflationary environment, I get your costs are going up, you know, it's fair to pass those along. Of the 31% growth in 2022, how much of a tailwind is pricing? I mean, is it none? Is it some? Like, how much? What's the number?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Stacy, I don't think I'm gonna answer that exactly. But what I will say is what I said before. Look, we are sharing, you know-

Stacy Rasgon
Stacy Rasgon
Analyst at Bernstein Research

Mm-hmm.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

As we go through this environment, you know, the key is to have long-term relationships, both on the supply chain side and on the customer side. Without a doubt, the predominant growth is products. It's units and ASPs from the mix of the product and that's the predominant growth.

Stacy Rasgon
Stacy Rasgon
Managing Director at Bernstein Research

Okay. For my follow-up, look, I feel really bad about nitpicking on a 51% gross margin, but I am going to, so I apologize in advance. I'll be honest, like, just given the mix seemingly should be getting quite a bit better year over year in 2022 versus 2021, and you're almost sitting at 51%, I mean, even going into Q1 anyways. Like, why doesn't that margin go higher? Can you give us some feeling of the drivers, I guess, from where you're sitting right now in Q4, the Q1 guide through the year? Like, why shouldn't we expect more upside to that gross margin given where the mix is going?

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

Yeah. As Stacy, I can take that. You know, as you heard Lisa talk about the semi-custom Q4-Q1, you would expect an increase, but it is flattish, and really it's product mix dependent, right? I think looking at any particular quarter is sometimes not the way to do it. It's kind of looking at the long term. You know, we did 48%+ in 2020, and we're going to 51% as a guide in 2022. If you look at it from that standpoint, the margin of the company continues to go up in a very steady way as data center grows, as we get to a better mix of product within the client and graphics business. That's, I think, the better way to look at it, Stacy.

Stacy Rasgon
Stacy Rasgon
Managing Director at Bernstein Research

Okay. Got it. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Mark Lipacis from Jefferies. Your line is now live.

Mark Lipacis
Mark Lipacis
Research Analyst at Jefferies

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I had one for Lisa and one for Devinder, if I may. Lisa, you know, it seems like one of the potential threats to the merchant processor players like yourself is that your own customers are designing their own processors. I'm wondering, does AMD have a role working with your customers to provide customized solutions, be it tweaking x86 or co-designing something more specific together hand in hand? You know, I don't know if Xilinx would play a role in that. Could you just talk about what you're doing with your customers and on that effort?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, sure, Mark. So, you know, actually it's a very exciting area. It's, you know, just consider it an evolution of, you know, we've always had a semi-custom model, like the work that we do with the console guys to design specifically for their application. As we look at the broader set of applications, you know, including some of these data center applications, we do believe that there's a sort of the next leg of the stool in terms of deep customer relationships. So we already do a lot of customization around product SKUs and, you know, specific optimization points, but we can certainly imagine both customer IP or, you know, different incarnations of our IP to really optimize.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

'Cause as, you know, as these applications end up really requiring so much volume, it really does justify, you know, additional customization for those cases.

Mark Lipacis
Mark Lipacis
Research Analyst at Jefferies

Gotcha. Thank you. Then a follow-up for Devinder, if I may. Devinder, you know, five, 10 years ago, I don't think a lot of people would've expected to hear you talk about buying back $ billions worth of stock. So congratulations on that progress. The question on this topic is, you know, is where's AMD in terms of evolving this recent capital return push into a policy? Or are you at the point where you're just looking opportunistically to buying back stock? Or, you know, some companies say, "We're gonna return X% of our cash flow to shareholders." Where is AMD in this in the evolution of capital return? Thank you.

Devinder Kumar
Devinder Kumar
EVP, CFO, and Treasurer at AMD

You know, I think we just started in 2021, $1.8 billion. We did another $1 billion early in 2022. Really that, those purchases are part of a long-term $4 billion share repurchase program. To your question about policy, I don't think we're quite there yet. We just started. We'll evaluate it as we close the Xilinx transaction and also in our outlook of the business, confidence in the business, and then evaluate what we do from an overall standpoint as we look out to the future, the next few years here.

Mark Lipacis
Mark Lipacis
Research Analyst at Jefferies

Fair enough. Thank you.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thanks, Mark.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Joseph Moore from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now live.

Joe Moore
Joe Moore
Semiconductor Industry Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you. You've obviously done a great job of bringing on supply, but it seems like AMD product is still relatively tight kind of everywhere. Do you see the constraints being more severe in any of the end markets versus any of the others?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Sure, Joe. Well, I think overall, you know, we have been in a mode of demand is larger than supply. Although we've made a lot of progress through 2021, and I expect to make more progress, you know, really incremental capacity will come online through 2022, especially in the second half. You know, I think it's really about sort of our prioritization decisions and trying to ensure that we're satisfying our customers' needs. But, you know, we're definitely working on getting more supply as we go through the year, and I think you should see it loosen up a bit.

Joe Moore
Joe Moore
Semiconductor Industry Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you. For my follow-up, you mentioned, I think, within server that both enterprise and cloud were up over 100%, which is pretty good. Can you talk about the mix of enterprise versus cloud within that business? Give us some qualitative sense of how big enterprise it has become.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Enterprise has grown nicely. I mean, we're still cloud-weighted. You know, if you look, sometimes these patterns, you know, it's better to look on a full year basis. We are still cloud-weighted, relative to enterprise. Enterprise has made a really, you know, nice progress. It's a sizable business, and you know, we've made a progress in, you know, with the larger OEMs, as well as, you know, across a number of regional OEMs.

Vivek Arya
Vivek Arya
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Bank of America

Great. Thank you very much.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thanks.

Operator

Operator, do we have time for two more, please? Certainly. Our next question is coming from Chris Caso from Raymond James. Your line is now live.

Chris Caso
Chris Caso
Managing Director at Raymond James

Yes. Thank you. Good evening. First question is, if you could give some indication of the strategy behind some of the processor variants that have come out most recently, Milan-X and Bergamo coming up. Do those variants represent incremental revenue to AMD? You know, what's the strategy behind it? How does that help you help the product line?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Sure, Chris. Well, I think the strategy is, you know, as we have gotten more scale in the business, we can invest more, and we see ways to, you know, further differentiate our product portfolio. I mean, I think, you know, Milan-X is really, you know, sort of the highest of the highest end. You know, we see that for, you know, for technical computing and some of these EDA workloads that, you know, that does give us a very differentiated product. Then we have the regular Milan product line. We'll have Genoa and, you know, Bergamo is really optimized for cloud. I do believe it gives us more opportunity to expand from a market share and a footprint standpoint.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

I think the broader statement, Chris, is that the data center is so large, there's so many different workloads that you can optimize. Like, you know, by doing these variants, we will actually get a better solution for the customer, give them better total cost of ownership and, you know, hopefully give us a larger footprint in that workload as well.

Chris Caso
Chris Caso
Managing Director at Raymond James

Thank you. As a follow-up, follow-up questions about supply and just following up on some of your earlier comments. Can you tell us how you're approaching that now with getting the additional supply? Is it a factor of your customers coming to you with requirements and then you going back to the foundry and obviously you need to make commitments to the foundries right now? Are those backed up by customer commitments? You know, in the event that you know, business you know, turns out to be better you know, as it was last year, are you able to procure that additional supply you know, in time for when the business needs it?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, we've set out a roadmap for, you know, frankly, not just 2022, but beyond, which allows, you know, let's call it very aggressive growth goals. You know, we work that on a regular basis with our customers and our supply chain partners. I would say we have better visibility than we have ever had from a customer demand standpoint. That gives us, you know, pretty good confidence in terms of what is needed. There are always gonna be some puts and takes and so we have enough flexibility to do that. You know, our goal is to dimension for success, right?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

At the end of the day, that's what we wanna do, is we wanna satisfy customer demand, and so we're dimensioning for success and, you know, we'll work with our customers, as their demand evolves.

Chris Caso
Chris Caso
Managing Director at Raymond James

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our final question today is coming from Harlan Sur from JPMorgan. Your line is now live.

Harlan Sur
Harlan Sur
Executive Director of Equity Research at JPMorgan

Hi, good afternoon. Just wanted to ask about your embedded business. You know, it's not often talked about, but it's a great market, right, diversified across various end markets. It can also leverage your leading edge and mature portfolio. You've got a pretty good lineup of EPYC-based and Ryzen-based processors targeting embedded. You've also gotten some pretty good design win traction in automotive with guys like Tesla. You've got wins in retail with digital signage, wins in networking, IoT edge platforms. With Xilinx, you can sort of really leverage their exposure in industrial, automotive, common consumer end markets. It's a small part of the business today, but how do you see the embedded opportunity for AMD looking out over the next several years?

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Yeah, thanks for the question, Harlan. Look, I like the embedded business. You know, I've always liked the embedded business. It's a nice sticky business over many years. It is smaller, but it has grown nicely and you know, the volume design wins you know, in automotive and they've now sort of expanded their usage. You know, they've recently expanded their usage over a broader part of their product portfolio. We've focused on networking and storage as key markets. I do think there is a very good synergy with Xilinx in terms of just the customer set and the channels.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

I do see it as a nice grower for us as we go through it, and there's very good reuse from our server products as well as our client products. You know, we'll talk a little bit more about it as the business gets to more size. You know, that'll be part of our Financial Analyst Day conversation when we get to that in June.

Harlan Sur
Harlan Sur
Executive Director of Equity Research at JPMorgan

Perfect. Thanks, Lisa.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Thank you, Harlan.

Operator

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.

Lisa Su
Lisa Su
President and CEO at AMD

Everyone, thank you very much for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. We appreciate your support of our company and look forward to seeing you again soon. As a reminder, we will have our financial analyst day this year on 9th June. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

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