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Friday, July 18, 2008
New AMD chief sees clear path to recovery
On Thursday, the day he was named chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Dirk Meyer wore jeans and cowboy boots to work. It’s his usual office attire, unless he’s traveling or at a formal meeting.
The casual attire fits Meyer’s approach to work - straighttforward, practical, analytical and definitely not fancy.
Meyer, 46, is an up-from-the-ranks chip design engineer who has been being groomed for the past two years to succeed Hector Ruiz as AMD’s chief executive.
The change happened sooner than planned. AMD announced the switch late Thursday, after it reported its seventh quarterly loss in a row.
Wall Street is not happy with the company, but Meyer sees a clear, logical path to recovery.
“There is a sense among people who don’t know the company well that we have to hit another home run” to pull AMD out of its slump, Meyer said Friday. “The fact is, a series of singles will work fine.”
AMD has talked about its product plans with potential customers, who say they like them.
“Our customers really want us to succeed,” he said. “I talk with customers all the time. They are very clear with us. They say: ‘What we need you guys to do is execute dependably.’ ”
Despite almost two years of losses, Meyer said AMD is on the verge of a rebound. It has just introduced promising products that should begin shipping in high volume in the second half of the year.
Executives have essentially guaranteed Wall Street that AMD will achieve an operating profit in the second half of the year.
And Meyer says the company is just months away from a major restructuring that will spin the manufacturing operations off into a separate company, wth new ownership.
Without the expensive manufacturing operations, AMD can concentrate on designing, marketing and selling chips that compete effectively against its two tough competitors - Intel Corp., the largest and richest company in the semiconductor industry, and Nvidia Corp., the foremost maker of graphics chips.
“Hector said he will be the most disappointed man on Earth if it is not done by the end of the year, and I will be the second most “ disappointed, Meyer said. “It certainly needs to happen to remove this cloud over our head relative to the financial viability of the company.”
Despite the big challenges AMD faces, Meyer sees plenty of opportunities. The company plays in two large and profitable markets - graphics and computer processors - and it only has one major competitor in each of those markets. That, h e believes is a far better situation than many chip markets where a half dozen or more companies fight it out.
Meyer says the new job is right for him. “If I wasn’t doing this, there is no other job in high tech that I would want to have. Anything else would be boring. This is not boring.”
