semi-custom icnludes a lot more than console, it include a load of custom server and other solutions which are known to be highly profitable
Thanks for proving me right with your own numbers.
First off, AMD makes precisely $0 off other 'semi-custom' products, you are categorically wrong. They have TWO semi custom chips being sold, one in each console, they have two more design wins for two more semi custom chips to start production sometime this year and to be sold some time this year, there is not a single cent of revenue or profit in the semi custom division from any product outside the PS4 and XO chip, so you are actually entirely wrong.
AS for the losses AMD have made, effectively none of the loss last year was cash losses at all.
One year people believe your house is worth £500k and you have £50k cash in the bank, the next year despite still having £50k cash in your bank, someone decides your house is worth £400k, and you can be said to have lost £100k, but only in perceived value of the house, you have lost NO money.
This is what the situation is at AMD, they took a write down in their value, but in terms of producing products, then selling them, they did not lose £300million that quarter, the massive majority of those written down profits had exactly nothing to do with day to day profit/losses from products. AMD outside of the outside value of the company, effectively broke even last year despite having a poor year in sales.
Anyone who knew what AMD was doing can see there was going to be a couple of lean years. They dropped Bulldozer development, brought in some of the industries best engineers and got to work on new architectures. It was a change in their schedule and plan and that means a 2 year hole in cpu/apu products of meaningful quality. To break even during this period is a very positive result, they made much bigger losses before last year, they improved their effective profit dramatically while also basically breaking even and restructuring.
They will have new products in 2016 for desktop, server and at minimum two semi custom contracts to add to the income and profits in that part of the business. In the same way the perceived value of the company can go down without making any real cash losses , the value can increase. With 2 years of little to no cpu/apu products and slowing sales the perceived value was ALWAYS going to decrease, it was expected by anyone with half a brain.
If Intel said "we're dumping Core and bringing something new but it will take 2 years" their value would decrease over the 2 years, but both Intel and AMD will bounce back when said new products come out.
AMD could make a lets say 500mil actual cash profit in 2016 as a result of increased sales of new products... but that would likely bump their perceived value up by a significant amount on top of that. So they might post accounts showing 1.5billion profit, but only 500mil of that is actually 'real' profit.
