In context: Financial reports for the last quarter show strong performance from AMD and Sony amid a weak year for the larger tech industry. A comparison of the two reports reveals just how important Sony is to the chip manufacturer. It is also possible to extrapolate some Xbox console numbers from the comparison.
In its Q4 2022 earnings report, AMD credited an unnamed customer with nearly one-sixth of its net income for 2022, which was up significantly compared to 2021. An analyst in the semiconductor industry believes that Sony is the customer based on its results for the same quarter. AMD supplies the chips that power Sony’s PlayStation 5 console and Microsoft’s Xbox Series machines.
The quarter ending December 31, 2022, was the best sales of PlayStation 5 at 7.1 million units. Combined sales for the first three quarters of Sony’s fiscal year 2022 (existing from March to December) reached 12.8 million, bringing the whole life of the console to 38 million. Sony expects to sell another 6.2 million PS5s before March 31, 2023.
Analyst Sravan Kundojjala says that not only does Sony account for 16 percent of AMD’s 2022 net revenue, but that number could rise to 20 percent if one excludes AMD’s Xilinx, which makes of PlayStation manufacturer AMD’s largest customer. The chip company admits that the loss of this one customer will measurably affect its business.
Sony accounts for 16% of AMD’s revenue in 2022, up from 14% in 2021. 20% of classic AMD (ex-XLNX). Semi-custom will peak in 2022 and decline in 2023. $AMD $ SONY pic.twitter.com/pwmk4j8Xem
— Sravan Kundojjala (@SKundojjala) February 28, 2023
More analysis from Kundojjala suggests PS5 shipments are more than 60 percent higher than those from Xbox. Microsoft stopped publishing Xbox sales figures a while ago, choosing to focus on subscriptions and digital sales, but everyone estimates that the PS5 is easily ahead of it. It’s just not clear how far ahead.
In an earnings call, AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company expects gaming revenue to decline year over year when it comes to consoles. This could suggest that AMD is expecting console demand to pick up in 2023 or that console sales will exceed the company’s expectations in 2022.
Game console sales are the likely reason why AMD’s Q4 2022 game revenue came within 11 percent of Nvidia’s even though the latter earned more overall and sold more units. gaming graphics card. That said, Team Green is also likely to benefit significantly from consoles, as one of its GPUs powers Nintendo’s extremely popular Switch. Nintendo sold one million Switch consoles last quarter, bringing the total handheld lifetime to 122 million.