See 2010 as the year of the semiconductor industry: AMD

Excerpts from What's Hot on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » BSE | NSE 09/02/12

One of the world's leading microprocessor makers, AMD, sees 2010 as a growth year for the microprocessor business. In fact the company also has plans to bid for govt projects in India.
In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Dirk Meyer, President and CEO of AMD gave a prognosis for the semiconductor business and on the global recovery for the IT sector.
Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Dirk Meyer on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: Twelve consecutive quarters of losses for the company how does the future behold for AMD & what is your opinion on global recovery for the IT sector?

A: We are in the business to make money. We restructured the company starting in late 2008 and continuing into the early part of this year to get our cost structure where it needs to be. I am happy that it is where it needs to be.
Looking forward, it is all about execution and revenue growth. The good news is that the IT ecosystem is starting a recovery. We saw that for sure in Q3. We have hopeful expectations that that is going to continue here into Q4 and that we will see 2010 as a growth year for the industry, which is clearly going to help us as a business.
Q: Which segment in India do you see sales growth coming in from?

A: As a business, we have got a lot of opportunities in India. One of the big focus areas for us is clearly in the government area. That is an area where frankly we are under represented today. Sadly, many government tenders today still specify Intel technology as the only basis for the computer procurement. That is not good for the government; it is not good for the people of India. What we are doing is to work with government entities here in the country so that they understand the benefit of competition, bring in better prices and ultimately fuels innovation.

Q: What is the company's plan for GlobalFoundries since some analysts have been saying that the semiconductor business will continue to hurt AMD's profitability?

A: First is background. We created GlobalFoundries in March, when the two companies split from each other. I think global foundries have tremendous promise as an independent semiconductor manufacturer, a company that will serve well the needs not only of AMD but of other fabulous semiconductor companies.
You said what our plans are; clearly GlobalFoundries is going to continue to focus on the needs of AMD while at the same time creating a capability to serve other customers. Ultimately, GlobalFoundries is going to get scale, it is going to be a successful foundry business.
In the near term, as you said, GlobalFoundries loses money. But the important thing to understand is the operations of the global foundries do not have any cash implications for AMD or our shareholders. So while we do consolidate, at the end of the day what matters is cash and GlobalFoundries has its own balance sheet and is largely our investment partner who invest in forward looking capital expansion for that business.

Q: Is AMD looking towards Fusion when it debuts in 2011 as its biggest blockbuster product and besides Fusion, what are the other solutions that the company is banking on globally?

A: First of all Fusion is not just a product, Fusion is really a vision. The idea is to say at the end of the day what we need to focus on as a technology company is the user experience. What are people using this IT equipment for? We think increasingly the promise is to make the user interface particularly of client machines, the PCs and other mobile devices, much more compelling, much more powerful.
The way to do that is to have a proper balance between CPU technology and graphics and video processing technology and ultimately bring this technology together on one chip, really to optimise again for the user experience. As you said, we have got the first Fusion product coming out in 2011. It is going to be a great product; it will be the first of an ongoing killer family of Fusion products.