AMD Reports Fourth Straight Quarter Net Loss

Still carrying the weight of costs related to last year's acquisition of graphics vendor ATI, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. recorded its fourth straight quarter of net losses Thursday.

The company reported a net loss of US$396 million, or $0.71 per share, for the third quarter, compared to net income of $136 million for the year-earlier quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had estimated a loss of $0.62 per share. The loss included a $120 million charge related to its acquisition of ATI Technologies last year.

AMD recorded third-quarter revenue of $1.632 billion for the quarter ending Sept. 29, an 18 percent year-over-year increase.

The company sold a record number of microprocessors during the quarter, AMD said in a news release. Microprocessor unit shipments increased 19 percent year-over-year and mobile processor shipments increased 68 percent, AMD said.

After months of delays, AMD finally released its latest quad-core Barcelona processor in September. AMD is locked in a quad-core chip battle with Intel Corp., which shipped more than 2 million quad-core processors during the quarter, Intel said in its earnings call on Tuesday.

AMD has already lost ground in the market for server chips to Intel Corp. in recent quarters. AMD's quad-core Opteron processor, also called Barcelona, opened up a revenue stream for company during the quarter, the company said.