MARKETS NORTH Markets, in plain language

Earnings · AI chips

AMD and Supermicro earnings recap: November 3, 2026

By Joe · Earnings recap · November 3, 2026 · Educational content only

Coverage, Nov 3, 2026: Joe follows AMD and SMCI. André follows AMD. Following means the name is on that person's watchlist, to hold, to watch, or to study. Our lists are the record.

Both companies reported after the close on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and both held their calls at 5:00 p.m. ET. Both beat expectations, both guided higher than the Street expected, and both stocks rose about 7 to 8 percent in after-hours trading. After-hours moves are early and can reverse, so treat them as a first reaction, not a verdict.

Context going in: chip stocks had a rough Monday. AMD fell 7.5 percent on November 2 in a broad chip selloff. That is why the guides mattered more than the quarters themselves, and both guides delivered.

AMD: what happened

AMD reported third quarter 2026 results for the quarter ended September 26, 2026.

  • Revenue: $13.38 billion, up 45 percent from a year earlier and up 16 percent from the second quarter. That is a record, it beat the company guide of about $13 billion, and it beat the consensus of about $13.1 billion.
  • Earnings per share: $2.09 on an adjusted basis, versus a consensus of about $1.95. GAAP earnings per share were $1.46. The gap is mostly a $1.1 billion non cash charge tied to the change in value of warrants AMD issued to certain customers. It reduced GAAP earnings by 66 cents a share and cost no cash.
  • Gross margin: 56 percent adjusted, flat from the second quarter and up 2 points from a year earlier. GAAP gross margin was 54 percent.

The segment that decided the quarter

  • Data Center revenue: a record $8.5 billion, up 97 percent from a year earlier. Data Center is now about 64 percent of AMD total revenue. Segment operating income rose to about $2.9 billion.
  • What drove it: strong demand for EPYC server processors and the launch of the Instinct MI450 Series GPUs, per the company release.
  • Client and Gaming revenue: $3.7 billion, down 8 percent. Inside that split, Client revenue rose 7 percent to $2.9 billion on Ryzen mobile processors, while Gaming fell 40 percent to $773 million on lower semi custom and graphics revenue.
  • Embedded revenue: $1.1 billion, up 29 percent, led by aerospace and defense, automotive, communications and industrial markets.

The guide, and what management said on the call

  • Fourth quarter guide: revenue of about $17 billion, plus or minus 3 percent. At the midpoint that is up about 66 percent from a year earlier and up about 27 percent from the third quarter, and it sits above the consensus of about $16.3 billion.
  • Fourth quarter gross margin guide: about 55 percent adjusted, one point below the third quarter. On the call, CFO Jean Hu explained the step down as a mix effect: data center AI revenue, which carries a margin a little below the company average, grows faster than the rest. Gross profit dollars still rise sharply at that margin on $17 billion of sales.
  • Segment colour for the fourth quarter: Hu guided Data Center revenue up about 50 percent from the third quarter, and said the fourth quarter will be the first quarter where data center AI revenue passes server CPU revenue. Client and Gaming revenue is guided down more than 20 percent.
  • The line that matters most: CEO Lisa Su said, "Demand for our Instinct and EPYC products continued to strengthen, and we expect growth to accelerate further in the fourth quarter as we scale Helios and Venice production."
  • Helios in plain language: Helios is AMD rack scale system that pairs Instinct MI450 Series GPUs with 6th Gen EPYC CPUs, called Venice, in one liquid cooled rack. The release says Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are already running models and workloads on the first Helios systems.
  • The bigger outlook from the call: Su said AMD now expects total revenue to grow more than 80 percent in 2027, with server revenue about doubling, data center AI revenue growing significantly more than double, and Data Center making up more than 80 percent of total revenue. That is a management outlook, not a result, and it depends on execution and supply.
  • Supply and memory: coverage of the call reported that demand remains above available supply and that AMD has secured additional supply to support the higher growth path, while working on wafers, substrates, advanced packaging and memory. On memory costs specifically, the clearest verified comment was about PCs: Su said PC sell through slowed late in the quarter as higher memory and component costs weighed on demand, and AMD is planning for PC market unit shipments to fall by a double digit percentage in 2027. No direct HBM price quote from the call is included here because none could be verified from the release.
  • One watch item under the headline: free cash flow was $554 million in the quarter, down from a year earlier, as AMD built about $3 billion of inventory to support the Helios and Venice ramp. The question for the fourth quarter is whether that inventory turns into shipped revenue and cash.

Stock reaction

AMD closed the regular session up about 3.7 percent, at about $484, then rose about 7 percent in after-hours trading, to roughly $517 to $519 in early evening checks.

Supermicro: what happened

Supermicro, full name Super Micro Computer, reported fiscal first quarter 2027 results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. The company noted the figures are preliminary and unaudited, as its quarter end review is not yet complete.

  • Net sales: $19.9 billion, up about 298 percent from $5.0 billion a year earlier and up from $11.1 billion in the prior quarter. That is a record.
  • Versus its own range: the result came in above the raised preliminary range of $18.5 billion to $19.5 billion that Supermicro gave on October 20, and well above its original guide of $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion. It also beat the consensus revenue of about $16.3 billion cited in coverage.
  • Earnings per share: $1.81 adjusted, versus a consensus of about $1.23 and versus the company guide of $1.01 to $1.10. GAAP earnings per share were $1.75, on net income of $1,594 million.
  • Gross margin: 12.7 percent GAAP and 12.8 percent adjusted. That is up from 9.3 percent GAAP a year earlier, and above the preliminary range of 12.0 to 12.5 percent, but down from 17.5 percent in the prior quarter.

How to read that margin move

On the call, new CFO Mark Long took the sequential margin drop apart rather than leaving it as one number. AI solutions were about 71 percent of revenue in the quarter, up from 59 percent in the prior quarter, and large scale AI deployments carry lower gross margins than the more diversified enterprise and channel business. His suggested check: across the last two quarters combined, adjusted gross margin was about 14.5 percent on about $31.1 billion of revenue, up from about 9.5 percent in the same two quarters a year earlier. In plain terms, the margin story depends on which customers took delivery in which quarter, and the two quarter view is steadier than either quarter alone.

Two more facts from the call that belong in the same paragraph as the headline:

  • About $2.3 billion of the quarter revenue was catch up deployments that had originally been scheduled for earlier periods and slipped on customer and data center readiness. Underlying revenue was about $17.6 billion on that basis.
  • One large data center customer represented 44 percent of revenue in the quarter, up from 28 percent for fiscal 2026 as a whole. Long said concentration at this level reflects the scale of current AI buildouts, noted that customers often pay in advance or against delivery milestones, and said days sales outstanding improved from 59 days to 36 days. Customer concentration is still the clearest risk line in this report.

The guide

  • Second quarter fiscal 2027 guide: net sales of $19.5 billion to $21.5 billion, with adjusted earnings per share of $1.66 to $1.90 and gross margin guided at 12.0 to 12.5 percent on the call.
  • Full year fiscal 2027 guide, raised: net sales of $72 billion to $82 billion, up from the prior range of $65 billion to $72 billion. Full year gross margin is expected at 11.8 to 12.2 percent, which implies a lower second half margin on mix as large AI deployments make up more of the total.

Supply, GPUs and liquid cooling: what management actually said

  • CEO Charles Liang said key component shortages continue to affect delivery timelines across the industry, including GPUs, and that the company wants to stay prudent about component availability and volatile pricing.
  • Long named the binding constraints on AI buildouts right now as land, power and data center shells, plus component availability and the pace at which customer facilities are ready to receive equipment already built.
  • Capacity and cooling: Liang said Supermicro is on track to produce more than 8,000 racks per month, including over 4,000 direct liquid cooled racks, by this December. The company said it is among the first to market shipping Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 racks with its Data Center Building Block Solutions and liquid cooling stack, and that its Rubin and Vera CPU racks are ready to ship. It also reported good demand momentum for AMD MI350 and MI355X platforms as it advances toward Helios and MI450 solutions.
  • Working capital check: cash flow used in operations was $434 million in the quarter, the cash conversion cycle improved from 149 days to 97 days, cash stood at $6.9 billion against $8.6 billion of bank debt and convertible notes, and management said customer prepayments funded most of the working capital build. Deferred revenue rose about $3.1 billion in the quarter.

Stock reaction

Supermicro closed the regular session up 3.12 percent at $31.39, then rose about 8 percent in after-hours trading, to about $33.88 as of a 7:23 p.m. ET snapshot.

What it means, in plain language

Two different companies told the same demand story from two different seats in the chain.

AMD designs the chips. Its Data Center revenue nearly doubled, its next quarter guide implies growth speeds up again, and its management lifted the 2027 outlook on the call. Supermicro builds the boxes and racks those chips ship inside. Its revenue nearly quadrupled from a year earlier, it cleared the top of a range it had already raised once, and it raised its full year outlook by about $10 billion at the midpoint.

The shared caution is also the same in both reports, and it is not demand. It is everything around demand: memory and component costs pressing on AMD PC business and on its margin mix, GPU and component availability at Supermicro, and, in Supermicro words, land, power and data center shells deciding how fast finished equipment can actually be received. Growth is real in these prints. So is the friction.

Read through to Nvidia, TSMC and memory

  • Nvidia reports Tuesday, November 17. These two prints set the sentiment check the briefing pack flagged. AMD talking about demand above supply and a faster Data Center ramp, plus Supermicro shipping Vera Rubin NVL72 racks and carrying a record backlog into the quarter, both point to strong demand for Nvidia hardware. The questions that carry over to November 17 are the margin question (Nvidia has flagged memory cost pressure, and AMD guide shows what mix does to margin) and the constraint question (whether Nvidia frames the limit as chips, or as power, land and shells, the way Supermicro did).
  • TSMC reports October monthly revenue on Tuesday, November 10, against its fourth quarter guide of $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion for the full quarter. AMD Venice and Instinct ramp, and the volume Supermicro describes, both run through TSMC and its packaging capacity. A strong monthly print would support the demand story these two companies just told. A soft one would complicate it before Nvidia says a word.
  • Memory: AMD PC comment is the cleanest memory signal in either report. Higher memory and component costs slowed PC sell through late in the quarter, and AMD is planning for a double digit fall in PC unit shipments in 2027. That is the consumer side of the same HBM and DRAM pricing story that Micron will speak to in December. High memory prices help the memory makers and squeeze everyone who buys memory, and Tuesday night showed both sides of that trade in one report.
  • Dell, estimated to report November 24, is the direct comparison for Supermicro at the server layer. Supermicro enterprise and channel revenue was $4.9 billion in the quarter, and its large deployment business did the heavy lifting. Dell backlog and AI server conversion is the next check on whether this server demand is broad or concentrated.

Dates to keep

  • Tuesday, November 10: TSMC October monthly revenue.
  • Tuesday, November 17: Nvidia results, the anchor of the season.
  • Tuesday, November 24, estimated: Dell results.

Sources

  • AMD third quarter 2026 results release, November 3, 2026, via GlobeNewswire, as published by Morningstar: revenue, segment revenue, margins, earnings per share and the fourth quarter outlook.
  • AMD earnings call coverage, November 3, 2026: the 2027 outlook, the fourth quarter segment colour, the margin mix explanation and the PC and memory cost comments, as reported by CNBC via AI Stock Wire and by TradingKey and MarketFlux summaries of the call.
  • Supermicro first quarter fiscal 2027 results release, November 3, 2026, company press release: net sales, gross margin, earnings per share, cash and the second quarter and full year outlooks.
  • Supermicro earnings call transcript, November 3, 2026, via AlphaStreet and MarketBeat: the margin mix explanation, the $2.3 billion catch up figure, the 44 percent single customer figure, the rack capacity and liquid cooling comments, and the land, power and shells constraint comments.
  • After-hours price snapshots, November 3, 2026: CappNotes closing summary (AMD up about 7.28 percent and Supermicro up about 8.00 percent after hours as of 5:07 p.m. ET) and a Finnhub snapshot for Supermicro at 7:23 p.m. ET. After-hours prices move and differ by snapshot time.
Educational content only, not financial advice. We are not financial advisors. Do your own research, and for decisions about your own money, talk to a licensed professional.