Pricing Pressure Pounds AMD Shares

Shares of AMD took a beating last week after the Austin chip maker announced a 4th quarter loss and offered cautious guidance because of an ongoing price war of attrition with Intel. The loss is largely due to charges related to the acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI, but what really rattled shareholders was the pricing outlook. We’ve already noted that price wars are a bad idea, but this one is particularly bad (notice that Intel shares haven’t exactly been gaining value lately, either). In other words, despite tremendous technical innovation on the part of both companies, neither company is becoming more valuable.