Summary:

• The AMD earnings release posted at the closing bell on Tuesday, July 25 topped analyst expectations
• Adding onto the strong quarterly performance, management is anticipating robust results from the third quarter and fourth quarters as well.
• After hours and next day trading have propelled AMD shares as much as 10%

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:$AMD) released their 2Q17 earnings results at the closing bell on Tuesday trading.

Put into perspective, analysts estimate AMD to report a break-even Earnings Per Share (EPS) on revenues of $1.16 billion. AMD far surpassed analyst expectations by reporting Earnings Per Share (EPS) and revenue figures of $0.02 per share, and $1.22 billion.

As AMD’s earnings release for 2Q17 exceeded analyst expectations, shares of AMD have surged more than 10% in after-hours trading, and are now up 7% from its previous day close in intraday trading.

However, Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst of Moor Insights and Strategy, is especially optimistic about AMD, as he believes there’s still more room for the tech company to grow.

“AMD has a lot to look forward to, as none of their actuals incorporate sales of EPYC server parts, only limited sales of the new Radeon Vega and none of the Ryzen notebook parts.” Moorhead added that AMD’s positive operating profit was merely “icing on the cake.”

AMD’s management has also come out with guidance figures, expecting year-over-year growth in the third quarter to reach about 15%. When the 15% premium is applied to revenue reported in 3Q16, we arrive at an implied revenue of $1.50 billion for the quarter, which far surpasses the $1.39 billion analyst consensus that Thomson Reuters has reported.

Management has also provided annual revenue guidance, suggesting that growth could reach mid to high-teen percentages, which is an improvement from the low-teen percentages that were last expected. In contrast, Thomson Reuters had previous full-year revenue growth projections of about 12.8%

Although AMD’s revenue forecasts are rather optimistic, they’re supported by management expectations of a year-over-year decline in inventory for 2017. AMD noted during its earnings call on Tuesday that it’s ramping up production in order to replenish inventory that has been depleted by a surge in demand.

Shares of AMD rallied in the booming wake of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, when AMD reported to CNBC that it had received an influx of demand for its graphics cards. At the time, the company’s RX 570 and RX 580 models were running on extremely short supply, with major computer hardware retailers often sold out.

Although cryptocurrencies have recently experienced some volatility in value, CoinDesk reports that Bitcoin has still more than doubled in value this year, while Ethereum is up 2,400% year to date. In order to mine these cryptocurrencies, miners must use graphics cards from Nvidia or AMD, with the latter delivering superior performance.

Although digital currency mining was a key topic during AMD’s earnings conference call with Wall Street Tuesday evening, management has voiced that they are still prioritizing its core gaming market. However, the company does intend to closely monitor the digital currency market.

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