Na het positieve nieuws van AMD CEO Jerry Sanders, die wist te vertellen dat AMD dit kwartaal mogelijk break-even zal draaien, zijn de AMD aandelen sterk gestegen (hoewel inmiddels al weer licht gedropt). Met Intel verliep het precies tegenovergesteld: de aandelen gingen omlaag, nadat Merrill Lynch & Co. in een rapport had bekend gemaakt weinig heil te zien in de Itanium. Intel's IA-64 platform zou niet kunnen concurreren met Alpha's Wildfire technologie:
The share price of AMD fell by a couple of bucks this morning after its precipitous ramp yesterday. But it did not drop as much as Intel's price, which fell by over five dollars after Merrill Lynch issued a warning on the stocks.Merrill Lynch has shoved Intel down a notch to "accumulate" rather than "buy", following yesterday's news from AMD. Other Wall Street analysts are now promoting AMD as a buy, following reports from the firm that it could break even in Q4.
More worryingly for Intel, the Merrill Lynch report expresses doubts about whether the Merced-Itanium will work wonders in the marketplace. [break] Check The Register voor meer info.
Update: C|Net News.com heeft ook een artikel gepost over het Merril Lynch rapport: [/break] Merrill Lynch cited increasing competition from AMD as one of the reasons for the downgrade. As reported yesterday, AMD said it stands a good chance of breaking even in the fourth quarter, substantially better than the large loss expected earlier, because of improved sales of flash memory and microprocessors. The company also outlined its product road map for 2000. Although Merrill analysts said they were upbeat about the AMD meeting, they did not change the rating on the stock.
In another report on AMD, Osha stated: "Despite the improved earnings outlook, however, we are not changing our intermediate-term and long-term neutral ratings. We believe that AMD is going to encounter the same competitive response from Intel as it attempts to ramp the Athlon as it did during the ramp of the K6. Intel has the ability to drop prices aggressively on the PIII lineup if it wants to, especially given Intel's own recent move to the P858 0.18 micron process."
