AMD 'confident' profitability will return
EMEA sales boss says launch of Windows 10 and new tech launches means he is optimistic for 2016
AMD's EMEA component sales manager Neil Spicer has said he is "confident" the firm can return to profitability in 2016.
It has been a rocky few months for the company, with it making a net loss of $197m (£130.6m) for its third quarter of 2015. And in September AMD announced a restructuring plan which would see it cut five per cent of the company's global workforce, according to an 8-K filing.
But speaking with CRN, Spicer said he is sure that profitability will return as long as the company remains true to its core ethos.
"From a personal stance, I am confident [we can be profitable]," he said. "I believe we are working with exactly the right customers, and over the last few years we have become much simpler to execute and do business with."
He said that in order to achieve profit, the company must ensure it is investing in the right areas.
"Moving forwards to 2016, we have to have profitable share growth," he said. "So it's choosing the right business to go after, both with the company itself and the ecosystem of partners. There is no point in us as a vendor chasing unprofitable partners.
"We want to focus [in the areas] we are good at - that's where we are going to invest heavily. That's things like winning the graphics battle with gaming and so forth, and we want to be part of this Windows 10 upgrade cycle."
Following the launch of Windows 10 this summer, Spicer was hopeful it will drive an upgrade refresh. He was also brazen on the benefits of combining the new operating system (OS) with AMD technology and hopeful businesses will choose AMD technology with the new OS.
"Our hope is through our education and market knowledge, that the reseller building that PC for the local dentist or butchers will be building it through an AMD platform," he said. "Because for £300, or whatever price is decided between the reseller and the business, we should be able to bring better or more performance for the same price point, than our competitors."
Spicer said that the combination of Windows 10, the advent of e-sports - competitive online gaming - and new technology and products AMD is launching, means "PC is an exciting market".
One of the new products Spicer highlighted was the Zen, its "next high-end CPU core architecture". He said this will help its play in the high-end desktop space, and the server area as well.
As well as driving profitability into AMD, Spicer also said he wants to translate this into the firm's resellers.
"With the channel you have to measure what's important to channel customers, so with things like profitability in the channel," he said. "We want people happily making money on selling AMD products. We don't have the luxury of being a loss leader; people want profitability selling our products.
"We are really focused on profitability in the channel, and part of that is also to clear inventory. We don't want customers sat on weeks and weeks of inventory, because they are putting cash on something that is not selling. So we focus heavily on sell out. That's with a number of things, such as marketing resources, education training. So we are focused heavily on that from a channel perspective."