JMP Securities upgraded today AMD stock to Strong Buy from Outperform, following Credit Suisse First Boston, who upgraded the Sunnyvale-based CPU company on March 19, 2003.

A JMP Securities analyst Krishna Shankar believes that Advanced Micro Devices will return to profitability faster than consensus forecasts because of positive news flow regarding potential design wins for its Opteron x86-64 server processor and also positive expectations concerning the flash memory business.

The facts mentioned above can really have ground under themselves because AMD’s gross margins are very likely to improve considerably provided that the Opteron launch is successful. Overall situation on the flash memory market also can be considered as positive for AMD, furthermore, the results of recent memorandum of understanding with Fujitsu can also bring a lot of good for the company if FASL LLC is eventually formed (see March 31, 2003 news-story for more details about the MOU). For instance, it will drive AMD’s revenues up.

JMP raises AMD share price target to $10 from $7.