AMD shares rise again as Wall Street projects big gains for the chipmaker against Intel

AMD shares are soaring after several analysts became more optimistic about the chipmaker’s market share gains over the past month.

Cowen said AMD will win business with cloud computing vendors as they seek to diversify their risk exposure to chip-specific security flaws.

“We do not believe any digital processing company is immune from bugs and security flaws; however, with one supplier to the entire cloud computing segment, the risk of any of these developments is clearly significantly amplified, as are vendors’ ability to react accordingly,” analyst Matthew Ramsay said in a note to clients Thursday. “We anticipate customer[s] will increasingly demand multi-sourcing and AMD will be pushing this narrative aggressively as they engage with customers.”

The company’s shares are up 5 percent Friday. On Thursday the stock rose 6.7 percent after Rosenblatt Securities raised its price target for AMD shares to a new Street high.

“AMD never planned or expected Intel to have 10nm delays in their own product planning from years’ back and acknowledges that a historical window of opportunity has opened,” analyst Hans Mosesmann said in a note to clients on Aug. 23.

The analyst commented on Intel’s delay in moving to the 10 nanometer chip process. Intel said last month that its 10 nanometer chips will be released for holiday 2019 compared with the launch of AMD’s 7 nanometer products later this year.

One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter. Smaller nanometer chipmaking technologies historically have allowed companies to create faster, more power-efficient chips.

Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs admitted it was wrong with its pessimistic view of AMD shares in a note to clients on Aug. 10.

The firm’s analyst Toshiya Hari predicted AMD server chip market share will rise to 5.1 percent in 2019 and increase to 9.4 percent in 2020 from an estimated 2.2 percent this year.

The chipmaker’s stock is significantly outperforming the market this year. Its shares are up 117 percent year to date through Thursday versus the S&P 500’s 7 percent gain. AMD stock’s performance ranks as the top return in the S&P 500 this year.