What Changed For AMD Stock, And What Did Not?
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) stock rose 126.1% in the year to November 12, 2026, while the S&P 500 returned 12.1% over the same year. This period ended nine days after AMD published its third-quarter report on November 3, 2026, when management raised its revenue outlook for 2027. Yet a forecast is not a result, and shares had already recorded their highest close of the year at $649.42 on October 6, prior to the report. So how much of AMD’s business actually changed over that year?
AMD’s Sales Grew Fast, Its Share Price Faster
AMD’s revenue rose 41.9% to $45.4 billion over the twelve months to September 26, 2026. The company also kept a larger portion of each sale, posting an operating margin of 17.7% compared with 9.4% over the twelve months before.
That is real growth, yet the share price climbed faster still. At the end of September 2026, investors paid 22.0 times AMD’s sales over the past twelve months, against 8.2 times a year earlier. Those multiples use end-of-September share prices, not the November dates of the return above. So on top of the growth in sales, the price paid for each dollar of those sales more than doubled.
Most Of AMD’s Sales Now Come From Data Centers
Management said on the November 3 call that data center chips brought in about 64% of AMD’s revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, up from 58% the quarter before. Data Center segment revenue rose 97% from a year earlier to $8.5 billion, with management crediting record sales of its EPYC server processors and its Instinct AI chips. That single quarter accounted for more than half of the $16.6 billion the segment sold in all of fiscal 2025.
Management expects the shift to keep going, guiding fourth-quarter revenue to about $17 billion, plus or minus 3%, compared with the $13.4 billion AMD reported for the third quarter. For 2027, management now expects revenue to grow more than 80%. Both figures are forecasts, not results.
Where AMD Holders Still Carry Risk
Holders now pay 125.7 times AMD’s earnings over the past twelve months, against 21.9 for the S&P 500, and the price appears to assume the data center growth arrives as management describes it. That multiple uses the November 12 share price and reported profit, which carried a $1.1 billion non-cash warrant charge in the third quarter, management said. Cash has also trailed profit lately: free cash flow was $554 million in the third quarter, against $1.9 billion a year earlier. Reported net income for that quarter was $2.43 billion. Management said AMD built its inventory up to $11.5 billion to meet data center demand.
The climb has been much weaker in AMD’s PC and gaming chips, where PC chip sales rose only 7% to $2.9 billion and gaming chip sales fell 40%. Client and gaming revenue was $3.7 billion in the third quarter, down 8% from a year earlier, on lower console and graphics chip sales, management said. Management’s plans assume PC market unit shipments decline by a double-digit percentage in 2027, and it expects client and gaming revenue to fall by more than 20% in the fourth quarter from the third. Client and gaming revenue is the number to watch when AMD next reports, expected in February 2027.
Does This Mean You Should Act On AMD?
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