by Anton Shilov
06/02/2003 | 10:18 AM
We know that mainboard sales are going to decline this quarter and we know that this should affect financial performance of companies like Intel, AMD, VIA, SiS, NVIDIA and so on. A Bear Sterns analyst says in today’s Barron’s news-paper that Intel’s revenues are likely to drop below estimates this quarter, while a Banc of America analyst same the same thing over The Street, but about AMD.
A Bear Sterns analyst believes that Intel overestimated its quarter’s revenue forecast of $6.4-$7.0 billion. Since the company receives most of its revenue from CPUs and chipsets, moderate sales of mainboards may impact sales negatively this quarter. The analyst predicts mainboard sales to drop 15% this quarter and this may force Intel to reconsider its sales expectations. Remember that the company issues its mid-quarter update on the 5th of June.
Sumit Dhanda, an analyst from Banc of America thinks that AMD financial performance will be lower due to weak mainboards shipments as well as Intel’s aggressive price-reductions. In fact, Intel’s aggressive Celeron pricing affects its revenue as well, but AMD is harder to fight back its market share from Intel given that it should make even more attractive offerings for end-users both from price and performance points of view. Additionally, AMD's white-box/clone market, which consists of 40% of its processor unit shipments, is currently experiencing softness, the analyst said in the research note.
It was reported that Intel recently lowered the prices on its flash memory devices; it means that the pressure on the market will be higher given that the Santa Clara, California-based chip giant is always very aggressive in winning market share back.
Banc of America expects AMD’s revenue to achieve $691 million this quarter, whereas AMD expects its sales to surpass $715 million last quarter.
As always, only time reveals the truth, though, the ideas proclaimed by analysts sound reasonable at this point.