After hitting a multi-month low earlier this month, Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) finally earned an upgrade from an analyst on Apr. 5. This could negate the negative coverage from a Susquehanna analyst, who downgraded the stock from neutral to negative on Mar. 26.
Per Tipranks, AMD now has 14 analysts who on average, have a $15.64 price target on the stock. Following Stifel’s ‘buy’ upgrade and $13 price target, Morgan Stanley also ranked AMD a buy last week.
Upcoming catalysts
Rumors surfaced that Sony (NYSE: SNE) will release a PlayStation 5 that is powered with an AMD 8-core Zen CPU. The GPU is based on Navi. Though revenue from the semicustom unit is steady, the company will not experience growth until both Sony and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) refresh the consoles. The latest refresh uses an old ‘Jaguar’ architecture whose CPU speeds were bumped slightly. This gives enough processing power for today’s games running on consoles.
Zen 2 is also on the way. This is different from Zen+, which is a second generation Ryzen manufactured on 12nm, down from 14nm in first generation Ryzens chips. Ryzen 2, code-named Pinnacle Ridge, should arrive this month. Compatible with the current AM4 platform, this chip should get a 10% performance boost and up to 18 percent benchmark gains. These specs should once again attract PC upgraders to AMD over Intel.
Disclosure: Author owns shares of AMD.
