SAN FRANCISCO (07/19/2000) - U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Wednesday continued its return to financial health, announcing its third consecutive profitable quarter, with record second-quarter net income and sales. Revenue from both the company's PC processors and flash memory products more than doubled in the quarter, AMD executives said.

For the three-month period ended July 2, 2000, AMD reported net income of US$207.1 million on net sales of $1.2 billion compared with the year-ago quarter when, excluding gains from the sale of Vantis Corp., the company declared a net loss of $172 million on net sales of $79.9 million.

Earnings per diluted share for the second quarter of fiscal 2000 were $1.21 after a 20 percent tax rate. Excluding the tax rate, the earnings per share would have been $1.51, according to AMD Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Fran Barton, speaking at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Based on a zero tax rate, 17 analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial estimated that AMD would report earnings per share of $1.13.

Year-on-year growth for AMD's microprocessor group was 106 percent, while its memory group experienced growth of 118 percent, Barton said. The company's communications group saw sales up 68 percent year-on-year.

"The second quarter was another great quarter," said AMD President and Chief Operating Officer Hector de Ruiz, pointing out that the quarter is traditionally the weakest for sales. He was highly enthusiastic about the impact in the market of AMD's seventh-generation processors -- the high-end Athlon and low-end Duron. "We've already got hundreds of thousands of units shipping," de Ruiz said. "Our chipset and motherboard partners have been outstanding."

Ruiz predicted that in the third quarter of this year, AMD will ship 3.6 million of the seventh-generation chips out of a total of 7 million processors, while in the fourth quarter of this year, the seventh-generation chips will account for 7.2 million out of a total of 9 million.

"The bulk of our production (in the second quarter) was K6-2, that shifts this (third) quarter," said Jerry Sanders, AMD's chairman and chief executive officer, adding that "now the preponderance of our production" will be seventh-generation chips.

AMD also said that its plans for further seventh-generation and an eighth-generation chip are on track. A trio of seventh-generation chips are due to appear in the fourth quarter of this year, company officials said. Mustang will be aimed at the high-end workstation server market, while both Corvette and Camaro will target the portables market. Sledgehammer, AMD's eighth-generation 64-bit processor should debut in late 2001, AMD added.

AMD released its results after the markets closed. The company's share price ended trading Wednesday at $90.25, down .82 percent on Tuesday's close.

AMD, based in Sunnyvale, California, can be reached at +1-408-732-2400 or via the Internet at http://www.amd.com/.