Merill Lynch meldt in een rapport over de winstverwachting van AMD voor het tweede kwartaal dat AMD momenteel al gestopt is met de produktie van K75 Athlon cores. Dit brengt vanzelfsprekend een groot risico met zich mee als er iets fout gaat met de produktie van nieuwe Thunderbird en Duron cores. Volgens AMD verloopt de overgang naar de Thunderbird in zowel Austin als Dresden voorspoedig:
Characteristically, AMD's approach to ramping both products is all or nothing. We were somewhat surprised to hear that AMD has already stopped all wafer starts of the older Athlon product. That means that all of the older Athlon products will be gone from AMD's sales mix by the end of the current quarter - AMD told us that all of the products in production have already been spoken for. If the production ramp of the new products goes well, AMD's product mix will be substantially more competitive a quarter from now than it is now. If there are any problems, the financial impact will be substantial. Our talk with AMD Friday revealed no problems - indeed, the early yields on Thunderbird at both the Austin fab and the copper interconnect fab in Dresden have been encouraging - but investors will need to track the situation closely.[...] AMD finds itself in the unique situation of being able to ramp production of a high-performance PC microprocessor with essentially no interference with Intel, which is struggling to ramp its own production capacity. We have seen AMD stumble on manufacturing execution before, and given the challenges that AMD faces over the next two quarters we need to monitor AMD's progress closely. However, the other big problem that AMD has always faced in the past - ruinous competition from Intel - is not a problem right now. With that in mind, and given AMD's exciting product lineup and we believe a very inexpensive stock valuation, we recommend Accumulating the stock.
Omdat AMD de produktie niet kan verhogen wegens de beperkte capaciteit in Austin verwacht Merill Lynch voor het tweede kwartaal een omzet van 1,146 miljard dollar, wat nauwelijks meer is dan de $1,092 miljard van het eerste kwartaal. Dit zal later dit jaar stijgen wanneer Dresden met de produktie van 0,18micron koper Thunderbirds begint.