AMD Vows Turnaround

Of course, with AMD's stock down 57% in the past 12 months, and the company continuing to bleed cash, it's not too difficult to understand where the pessimism about the company comes from.

Missing from the briefing was AMD's customary rant about rival Intel's(INTC Quote) monopolistic practices, as if acknowledging that AMD's latest woes are of its own making.

Fred Weiss of AtlanticTrust SteinRoe said there was not enough meat in the presentation to change his bearish view of AMD.

"They had nothing to talk about, except that they scheduled an analyst meeting," said Weiss, whose firm currently has a position in Intel but not in AMD. And he said AMD's financial outlook was based on optimistic assumptions, including a 15% unit growth in the PC microprocessor market in 2008 and continued share gains against Intel.

Executives said the company would return to operating profitability in the third quarter of 2008 and be profitable on the operating income line for the full 2008 year.

That's actually slightly better than the average Wall Street expectation, which calls for an operating loss of $124.7 million in 2008.

But company executives were less specific about the bottom line, declining to put out a time frame for net income profitability. AMD has lost $1.6 billion in the first three quarters of 2007.

AMD also said it would grow the topline faster than the market in 2008, while forecasting gross margins to rise to a range of 46% to 50% for the year.