High drama at AMD
In its second quarter earnings call, AMD announced that long time CEO and chairman Hector Ruiz is stepping down to the role of executive chairman and Dirk Meyer, previously president and COO is now president and CEO.
Ruiz said “It’s time to turn the company over to a new leader,” and that Meyer is “the right leader at the right time.”
The move comes as AMD announced a net loss of $1.189 billion for the second quarter and that it was divesting its handheld and DTV product businesses in order to be able to reclassify them as discontinued operations for the purpose of financial reporting.
This means AMD is selling off these businesses, a move that will lead to questions about how many other assets AMD plans to sell off now that Meyer's calling the shots. There were a lot of questions about AMD's "asset smart" strategy of, essentially, selling of many of its assets like its fabrication plants.
No clear answer was offered as to the extent of the future sell of and how central it will be to the aim of breaking even before the end of the year. "Asset smart will happen as soon as we can get it done," was one comment.
The majority of the loss came from the now discontinued operations, as reported last week. But continuing operations still lost $269 million.
