Wall Street expects strong data center growth, but AMD shares enter earnings nearly 30% below their recent all-time high
Advanced Micro Devices reports third-quarter results after the closing bell on Tuesday, November 3. The stock is arriving the way a marathoner shows up at mile 25: technically still running, visibly wobbling.
Shares dropped nearly 11% on Friday and kept sliding Monday. AMD itself put out no news. The pressure came from a broader retreat across chip stocks.
The result is a stock sitting nearly 30% below the all-time high it set less than a month ago.
What Wall Street expects
The numbers analysts are penciling in are not modest. Consensus calls for revenue of around $13.1 billion. That would mark a 42% jump from the $9.25 billion AMD posted a year earlier.
Profit expectations are climbing even faster. Analysts project adjusted earnings per share of about $1.95, up 62% from $1.20 in the third quarter of 2025.
The engine behind those projections is the Data Center segment. Estimates put that unit’s revenue between $8.2 billion and $8.3 billion for the quarter.
Two product lines carry most of that weight. EPYC is AMD’s family of server processors, the general-purpose brains inside cloud computing racks. Instinct is its line of AI accelerators, the specialized chips built to train and run large AI models.
The company will host a conference call at 5 p.m. ET.
Why the stock is stumbling into the print
The recent selloff wasn’t about AMD specifically. It was about the neighborhood.
Sector-wide jitters intensified after Intel issued a disappointing outlook. When one major chipmaker sounds cautious, traders tend to sell the whole group first and sort out the details later.
The AI bets behind the optimism
Much of the enthusiasm around AMD rests on its push into AI infrastructure, and Meta sits at the center of that effort.
AMD is testing its Helios systems at Meta. Helios is a rack-scale platform, meaning AMD isn’t just selling individual chips but entire cabinet-sized systems with processors, accelerators, and networking designed to work together.
The relationship could go further. There is a potential deal for custom MI450 GPUs built for Meta. The partnership reportedly involves investment of up to $1 billion to support AI infrastructure.
Meta isn’t the only name in the picture. AMD has plans to deploy large-scale systems with additional partners, including Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models.
Production of the MI450 series and Helios systems is still ramping, and that ramp is expected to lift revenue in the fourth quarter of 2026 rather than the one being reported Tuesday.
What this means for investors
The Data Center figure deserves the closest look. If it lands at or above the $8.2 billion to $8.3 billion range, it supports the thesis that EPYC and Instinct demand remains firm despite sector anxiety.
Watch for any update on the Meta relationship as well. Progress on the Helios testing or the potential custom MI450 deal would give investors something concrete to anchor the AI narrative to.
The Anthropic deployment plans are another thread worth following. Each additional large customer reduces AMD’s reliance on any single partner.
AMD’s results will also be scrutinized as a signal for chip demand broadly, especially after Intel’s outlook rattled the group.
A stock that fell nearly 11% in a single session on no company news has shown it can move sharply on sentiment alone. Earnings day adds actual news to that mix.
