Advanced Micro Devices Inc. reiterated Tuesday that cryptocurrency mining was less than 10% of its revenue last year in response to reports that a change in Ethereum mining would damage its business. “Yesterday a report was published on AMD which hypothesized very high revenue for Ethereum-related GPU sales,” the company wrote in an unsigned blog post. “As a reminder, on our Q4’17 earnings conference call we stated that the percentage of annual revenue related to Blockchain was approximately mid-single digit percentage in 2017.” While the post did not name any names, Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland downgraded the stock to negative from neutral on Monday, and wrote that “the proliferation of Ethereum mining ASICs have the ability to impact ~20% of AMD’s total company revenue.” AMD and Nvidia Corp. are thought to have benefited from the use of their GPUs to mine on the Ethereum blockchain last year, but that cryptocurrency is believed to be almost ready to move beyond GPU mining and require ASIC chips. AMD’s blog post focused on the company’s core businesses and their ability to grow, specifically mentioning its inclusion in some Apple Inc. products. AMD stock fell a combined 5.9% Monday and Tuesday; in late trading Tuesday after the blog post hit, shares gained about 0.3%.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
From:: Stock Market News