What's a half-billion among friends?

We didn't hear it ourselves, but the Times Union's Eric Anderson reports this statement from the lips of a featured speaker at yesterday's Summit in Tech Valley:

Doug Grose, formerly of IBM Corp. and now with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., said this morning that AMD’s most recent quarter, when it lost $600 million, comes after 14 quarters of consecutive gains, adding that “one quarter doesn’t make a year.”

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Someone alert Mr Grose to take a look at his portfolio; he might be in for a surprise. In fact, AMD lost $574 million in the preceding quarter (4Q '06). Granted, most (but not all) of that figure represents the acquisition costs of the ATI deal, but a loss is still a loss as far as the financial fig's are concerned.

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