AMD admits to overpricing & underselling CPUs/GPUs over last two quarters, plans to continue practice

During the last AMD earnings call with investors and analysts, Dr. Lisa Su, AMD CEO, revealed that the company held back shipments of CPUs and GPUs over the previous two quarters. She went on further to explain that the company will continue to lessen orders for the next quarter, albeit much less.

AMD CEO reveals limitation on shipments of CPUs & GPUs over last two quarters

The company feels that this next quarter will return the most diminutive sales figures due to the slow but stagnant marketplace for computers and components. NVIDIA recently admitted to similar restraint for its GPUs two months ago but has not revealed any recent details as to if they are continuing this practice. Most companies outside of computer components generally see a lack of sales during the first few months after the holiday season.

We do believe the first quarter is the bottom for our PC market — for our PC business, and we’ll see some growth in the second quarter and then a seasonally higher second half. In terms of the under shipment, I mean, I think we’re — we undershipped in Q3, we undershipped in Q4.

We will undership, to a lesser extent, in Q1. So I think you can infer that from our guidance single-digit down. And then, we’ll be back to a more normal environment. Now, just as a reminder though, the first half is not usually a — the first half is usually a seasonally weak client time anyways.

— Dr. Lisa Su, Chief Executive Officer, AMD

To stay competitive, AMD did lower the pricing on CPUs and GPUs over the last few quarters. The company’s current AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors saw a dramatic twenty percent decrease in pricing since its first month of release. Intel has faced the complete opposite and continued to ship an excess of inventory into the market which is getting hard to get off the shelves due to a decline in the PC segment.

The new AMD Ryzen 7000X3D series will begin shipping during the latter half of this month, starting at $449 for the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, $599 for the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D, and $699 for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D. The Ryzen 9 7950X CPU was initially released with an MSRP of $699 but is currently selling below $600 with no sign of increasing the cost of the chip in the future.