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ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown, where we take the earnings call transcripts you don't have time to read and turn them into a conversation you can actually enjoy. I'm Alex.

JORDAN: And I'm Jordan. And Alex, before we dive into Amazon's Q2 numbers, which are honestly wild—

ALEX: They are, but first — a quick disclaimer. This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Good, glad that's out of the way, because we've got a lot to unpack.

ALEX: Let's start with the headline numbers. Amazon posted $200.6 billion in revenue for Q2 2026, up 20% year-over-year. Operating income came in at $27.5 billion, up 43%. But the real story, as usual these days, is AWS.

JORDAN: AWS grew 36.7% year-over-year — and that's the fifth straight quarter of acceleration. Fastest growth in 18 quarters, back when the business was less than half its current size. They added $4.6 billion in revenue quarter-over-quarter, about 80% more than their biggest jump ever.

ALEX: And the run rate — AWS is now annualizing at $169 billion. Andy Jassy pointed out that would rank 24th on the Fortune 500 as a standalone company. That's not a division anymore, that's a Fortune 25 company.

JORDAN: The backlog is the number that jumped out at me though — $496 billion, growing triple digits year-over-year. That's demand they haven't even fulfilled yet.

ALEX: Right, and that ties into the CapEx story. Amazon bumped its 2026 cash CapEx guidance from about $200 billion to $220 billion, mostly because of higher memory chip costs. Jassy spent a good chunk of the call explaining the math behind that — data centers take about two years to build but then monetize for 30-plus years, while servers break even in under three years and run five to six years. It's basically Amazon saying "trust the ROIC math," even while free cash flow takes a hit in the near term.

JORDAN: And CFO Brian Olsavsky backed that up on margins — AWS operating income was $16.6 billion, a 39% operating margin. That's up 650 basis points year-over-year, or 520 if you strip out a one-time derivative accounting gain on energy contracts. An analyst on the call, Doug Anmuth, basically asked "shouldn't AI workloads be dragging margins down?" and the answer was: not so far, thanks to efficiency gains and capacity optimization.

ALEX: Speaking of AI specifically — two numbers stood out. Amazon's chips business, that's Trainium and Graviton, now has an annual revenue run rate over $25 billion, growing triple digits. And separately, AI revenue overall also crossed $25 billion run rate. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have made multi-year, multi-gigawatt commitments to Trainium.

JORDAN: There was also a really interesting exchange about whether Amazon needs its own frontier model. Jassy's answer was basically "no, but we're building one anyway" — for cost control, prioritization, and speed, not because Bedrock needs it to survive. His view is there won't be one model to rule them all, there'll be half a dozen comparably good frontier models within a few years, and Amazon wants to be one of them while still hosting all the others in Bedrock.

ALEX: There was also news that Amazon is exploring selling Trainium chips directly to third-party data centers, separate from AWS cloud. Jassy said there's "a real chance" that happens.

JORDAN: Let's talk Stores for a second, because it's easy to get AWS tunnel vision on these calls. Worldwide paid units grew 17%, North America revenue hit $116.2 billion, up 16%. Grocery is a big theme — Amazon says it's now the second-largest grocer in the

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# Beta Finch Podcast Script: Amazon Q1 2026 Earnings

**ALEX:** Welcome back to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown where we cut through the noise to bring you what really matters from corporate America's latest results. I'm Alex, and joining me as always is Jordan. Today we're diving into Amazon's blockbuster Q1 2026 earnings that just dropped, and folks, this was a quarter that reminded everyone why AMZN remains one of the most closely watched stocks in the market.

Before we jump in, I need to mention that this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Jordan, Amazon just posted some absolutely staggering numbers. Walk us through the headline figures.

**JORDAN:** Alex, these results were genuinely impressive across the board. Amazon delivered $181.5 billion in revenue, up 17% year-over-year, or 15% excluding foreign exchange impacts. But here's the kicker - operating income hit $23.9 billion with a 13.1% operating margin. Andy Jassy specifically called this their highest operating margin ever.

**ALEX:** That margin number really jumps out. For a company of Amazon's scale to be hitting record profitability while still growing at this pace is remarkable. But the real story here seems to be AWS, right?

**JORDAN:** Absolutely. AWS was the star of the show. Revenue hit $37.6 billion with 28% year-over-year growth - that's the fastest growth rate AWS has seen in 15 quarters. And get this - Jassy said it's very unusual for a business to grow this fast on a $150 billion annualized run rate. The last time they saw growth at this clip, AWS was roughly half the size.

**ALEX:** The AI story is clearly driving a lot of this growth. What stood out to you from their AI commentary?

**JORDAN:** The AI numbers are just mind-blowing when you put them in context. Jassy mentioned that three years after AWS launched, it had a $58 million revenue run rate. But in the first three years of this AI wave, AWS's AI revenue run rate is over $15 billion - that's 260 times larger. He said they've never seen a technology grow as rapidly as AI.

**ALEX:** And they're not just riding the wave - they're building their own chips to compete. Tell us about their custom silicon story.

**JORDAN:** This might be the most underappreciated part of Amazon's business right now. Their chips business saw nearly 40% quarter-over-quarter growth, with an annual revenue run rate now over $20 billion. But here's the fascinating part - Jassy said if their chips business sold chips like other leading chip companies do, their annual revenue run rate would be $50 billion. He believes they're now one of the top three data center chip businesses in the world.

**ALEX:** That's incredible positioning, especially when you consider the supply constraints everyone's dealing with. Speaking of which, how are they handling the memory and component cost inflation that's hitting everyone right now?

**JORDAN:** Jassy was pretty candid about this challenge. He said component costs, particularly memory, have "skyrocketed" due to insufficient capacity for the demand. But interestingly, he sees this as actually helping AWS win more enterprise customers. Since cloud providers are getting priority from suppliers, companies with on-premises infrastructure are being pushed to migrate to the cloud faster because AWS has more supply than they can get on their own.

**ALEX:** That's a fascinating competitive dynamic. Now, outside of AWS, how did the core retail business perform?

**JORDAN:** The retail side showed impressive momentum too. Units grew 15% year-over-year - Jassy sa

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**Beta Finch: Amazon Q4 2025 Earnings Breakdown**

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown! I'm Alex, and joining me as always is my co-host Jordan. Today we're diving into Amazon's fourth quarter 2025 results, and wow - what a quarter this was.

Before we jump in though, I need to mention that this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Now Jordan, Amazon just posted some impressive numbers - $213.4 billion in revenue, up 12% year over year. But the real star of the show seems to be AWS, doesn't it?

JORDAN: Absolutely, Alex. AWS is firing on all cylinders right now. They hit $35.6 billion in quarterly revenue with 24% growth - that's the fastest growth they've seen in thirteen quarters. More importantly, AWS is now running at a $142 billion annualized rate. To put that in perspective, they added $2.6 billion quarter-over-quarter and nearly $7 billion year-over-year.

ALEX: Those are massive numbers. And Andy Jassy was pretty bullish about their AI business specifically. What caught your attention there?

JORDAN: The AI story is fascinating. Their chips business - that's Graviton and Trainium combined - is now over $10 billion in annual revenue and growing triple digits. But here's the kicker: Trainium alone is a multi-billion dollar business, and they say nearly all of their Trainium 3 supply will be committed by mid-2026. That suggests incredible demand.

ALEX: Speaking of demand, they announced plans to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures. That's a staggering number that probably has some investors nervous about returns.

JORDAN: Yeah, that $200 billion figure dominated the Q&A session. Mark Mahaney from Evercore really pressed them on return on invested capital, and Jassy's response was telling. He said they're monetizing capacity as fast as they install it, and emphasized that AWS has a 35% operating margin despite all this investment. His confidence comes from their track record - they've proven they can forecast demand and avoid wasted capacity.

ALEX: What's interesting is how Jassy framed this AI opportunity. He called it "extraordinarily unusual" and said every customer experience we know today will be reinvented with AI. That's a pretty bold statement.

JORDAN: It really is, and the numbers back up some of that optimism. Their Bedrock service is now a multi-billion dollar annualized business with customer spend growing 60% quarter-over-quarter. Amazon Nova Forge, their new pre-training customization tool, sounds like a potential game-changer for enterprises wanting to train models on their own data.

ALEX: Let's pivot to the retail side for a moment. The stores business showed solid growth, but there were some interesting trends in customer behavior.

JORDAN: Right, everyday essentials are becoming huge for them - growing nearly twice as fast as other categories and representing one out of every three units sold. Their same-day delivery reached nearly 70% more items than last year, and here's a stat that jumped out: customers using their perishables delivery service shop more than twice as often as those who don't.

ALEX: That perishables business seems to be a real growth driver. They're calling themselves a large grocer now with over $150 billion in gross sales.

JORDAN: And the speed improvements are remarkable. On Christmas Eve, customers in 4,000 US cities could order items until midday and get same-day delivery. Their "add to delivery" feature, launched just six months ago, already makes up 10% of all Prime volume. These aren't just incremental improvements - they

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ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown! Today we're digging into American Tower's second quarter 2026 results — ticker AMT. And Jordan, before we get into towers and data centers, I want to say upfront: this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Good context to set. And this was a genuinely eventful quarter — they raised guidance for the second time this year, exited an entire region, and had a literal call disconnection mid-Q&A. So let's dig in.

ALEX: Let's start with the headline numbers. Consolidated property revenue grew over 5% year-over-year excluding FX and straight-line noise. But here's the thing — there's a DISH Network asterisk on almost every metric this quarter.

JORDAN: Right, DISH churn is the big one-time drag. Strip that out, and property revenue actually grew over 7% on a cash, FX-neutral basis. Organic tenant billings growth was nearly 2% as reported, but 4% excluding DISH.

ALEX: And AFFO per share — the metric REIT investors really care about — grew about 1% as reported, but over 5% normalized for DISH and refinancing costs. CFO Rod Smith basically called this a "trough year" for AFFO growth.

JORDAN: Which is an important framing. They're saying 2026 absorbs a bunch of one-time headwinds — DISH churn worth about 400 basis points, higher refinancing costs at 150 basis points, and a step-down in their services business. Normalize all that out and you're looking at roughly 7% AFFO per share growth on an FX-neutral basis.

ALEX: So the story is: messy optics this year, cleaner story in 2027.

JORDAN: Exactly. And they backed that up with action — raising full-year guidance across property revenue, EBITDA, and AFFO. Property revenue outlook up $110 million at the midpoint, EBITDA up $45 million, AFFO up nine cents a share.

ALEX: Now let's talk about the real star of the show — CoreSite, their data center business. This thing keeps stealing the spotlight from the core tower business.

JORDAN: It's wild. CoreSite delivered record leasing this quarter — CEO Steve Vondran said they added more new business this single quarter than in all of 2021. Data center revenue grew about 12%, and management raised the full-year data center growth outlook to approximately 15%, up from 13%.

ALEX: And the AI angle is really the hook here. Nine of the top 10 AI companies and three of the top five neoclouds are already housed in CoreSite facilities.

JORDAN: What struck me is the framing around interconnection — it's not just renting rack space anymore. Customers are building private "on-ramps" to move massive datasets directly between cloud and AI environments. That's a stickier, higher-value business than plain colocation.

ALEX: They've grown CoreSite's capacity one and a half times since acquiring it in 2021, and management says there's a clear runway to nearly triple it from here.

JORDAN: On the strategic side, the big move this quarter was completing the sale of their Philippines and Bangladesh operations — that's a full exit from the APAC region. It's part of a multi-year pivot toward developed markets and higher-quality earnings streams.

ALEX: And leverage is now sitting at 4.9 times, right in their target range of three to five times. Balance sheet flexibility was a recurring theme — they're weighing M&A, buybacks, and further deleveraging.

JORDAN: On buybacks specifically, they've spent about $200 million so far this year against a $2 billion authorized program, with roughly $1.4 billion left to deploy.

ALEX: Let's get into the Q&A, because there was some good stuff — including an actual technical outage where the call cut out for several minutes during CFO Rod Smith's capital allocation answer.

JORDAN: That was a l

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# Beta Finch Podcast Script: American Tower (AMT) Q1 2026 Earnings

**ALEX**: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex.

**JORDAN**: And I'm Jordan. Today we're diving into American Tower's Q1 2026 results - and folks, this one's got some interesting twists.

**ALEX**: Before we jump in, I need to share our standard disclaimer: This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN**: Absolutely. Now Alex, American Tower - AMT - is one of the biggest tower companies in the world, and they just reported what I'd call a solid but not spectacular quarter. What caught your attention first?

**ALEX**: Well, they raised guidance across the board, which is always nice to see. But when you dig into the numbers, it's really about foreign exchange tailwinds and some accounting stuff rather than explosive underlying growth. Property revenue guidance went up by about $145 million at the midpoint - sounds great until you realize $110 million of that is just FX helping them out.

**JORDAN**: Right, and there's this whole DISH situation hanging over everything. They've basically written DISH out of their numbers completely because of ongoing litigation. CEO Steven Vondran was pretty clear - they think their contract is enforceable, but they've "completely derisked" their guidance by excluding DISH entirely.

**ALEX**: That's a smart move from a guidance perspective. Any upside from DISH is just gravy at this point. But let's talk about the real growth drivers. What's interesting is their data center business - CoreSite - is absolutely on fire. 17% growth when you strip out the accounting noise.

**JORDAN**: CoreSite is fascinating because it's not just a traditional data center play. Vondran kept emphasizing it's really an "interconnection hub" - people come there to connect to other people, cloud providers, and now AI inference services. They're seeing what they call an "inflection in interconnection activity," which is basically their secret sauce for higher margins.

**ALEX**: And they're doubling down on it. Over $700 million in growth capital planned for CoreSite to build out capacity. They're buying land, securing power, even looking at new markets - though Vondran wouldn't spill details on where.

**JORDAN**: The AI angle is particularly interesting. They're not just riding the AI wave passively - they're positioning CoreSite as the place where AI workloads want to be because of all those interconnections. It's like being the popular kid at school that everyone wants to hang out with.

**ALEX**: Ha! That's actually a pretty good analogy. Now on the traditional tower side, organic growth was around 4% when you adjust for the DISH mess - solid but not spectacular. What stood out to me was their commentary about potentially getting back into new tower construction in the U.S.

**JORDAN**: Yeah, that was intriguing. They've been pretty quiet on U.S. build-to-suit for a while, but Vondran hinted they're having conversations with carriers about it. Meanwhile, they're actively building in Europe - 700 new sites planned there. The economics seem to work better overseas right now.

**ALEX**: Let's talk about the elephant in the room - all the M&A speculation in the tower space. When asked about potential deals, Vondran was diplomatically non-committal but said they look at "everything." No strategic imperative to overpay, though.

**JORDAN**: I loved his response to the question about what it means if competitors go private. Basically said they don't run their business based on what others are doing, but acknowledged the valuation disconnect between public and private markets. Very measured response.

**ALEX**: The satellite question was interesting too.

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**Beta Finch Podcast Script: American Tower Q4 2025 Earnings**

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**ALEX:** Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, and I'm here with my co-host Jordan to dive into American Tower's Q4 2025 results. This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN:** Thanks Alex. American Tower just wrapped up what they're calling "a great year and excellent fourth quarter," but there's definitely some complexity beneath the surface. The big headline number looks solid - they delivered 8% growth in attributable AFFO per share for the full year, with an impressive 13% growth in Q4 alone.

**ALEX:** Right, and that 8% growth sits right in their long-term target range of mid-to-high single digits. But Jordan, there's an elephant in the room here that's affecting their 2026 outlook - can you walk us through the DISH situation?

**JORDAN:** Absolutely. So DISH has defaulted on their payment obligations to American Tower, and management has completely removed DISH from their 2026 guidance. To put this in perspective, DISH represented about 2% of consolidated property revenue and 4% of U.S. and Canada property revenue in 2025. We're talking roughly $200 million annually through 2035-2036.

**ALEX:** That's a significant hit. How is this affecting their 2026 outlook?

**JORDAN:** Well, it's pretty dramatic. Their consolidated organic tenant billings growth is expected to be only about 1% in 2026. But here's the key - if you exclude the DISH churn, that number jumps to 4%. So the underlying business is still performing well, but this one-time event is masking that growth.

**ALEX:** I noticed they're being pretty aggressive about pursuing legal action against DISH. What's the company saying about potential recovery?

**JORDAN:** CEO Steven Vondran was clear that they plan to "fight in the litigation" and think their contract is enforceable. But they're not counting on any recovery in their guidance - anything they collect would be upside. Smart approach from a conservative forecasting standpoint.

**ALEX:** Let's talk about the regional performance because there's quite a bit of variation. What stood out to you?

**JORDAN:** The regional story is really interesting. In Africa and Asia-Pacific, they're expecting 8.5% organic tenant billings growth - that's actually accelerating from 2025 levels. Europe is steady at 4%. But Latin America is the real challenge, with organic tenant billings expected to decline 3% due to elevated churn in Brazil from carrier consolidation.

**ALEX:** That Latin America situation sounds concerning. How is management framing that?

**JORDAN:** Actually, they're surprisingly optimistic. They're saying the churn is happening faster than expected, which means the market repair in Brazil should happen sooner - they now expect growth to accelerate in 2027 instead of 2028. It's one of those "short-term pain, long-term gain" situations.

**ALEX:** Now, one area that's been a real bright spot is their data center business through CoreSite. What are the numbers there?

**JORDAN:** CoreSite is absolutely crushing it. They're expecting 13% growth in their U.S. data center business in 2026, and this is their fourth consecutive year of record sales growth. What's really exciting is the AI component - demand for AI-related use cases like inferencing and machine learning is becoming their fastest-growing segment.

**ALEX:** I caught in the Q&A that they actually have more demand for inferencing than they can currently meet. That seems like a good problem to have.

**JORDAN:** Exactly! Vondran mentioned they're being selective about their customer mix, only choosing "the best names in the space." They're investing over $700 million in their d

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**BETA FINCH — AMD Q2 2026 EARNINGS BREAKDOWN**

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan, and today we're digging into Advanced Micro Devices — AMD — and their second quarter 2026 results. Jordan, this one's a big one.

JORDAN: It really is. Record revenue, and the guidance for next year is honestly kind of stunning. Let's get into it.

ALEX: Before we do — quick disclaimer. This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Good to have that up front. Okay, let's talk numbers.

ALEX: AMD posted revenue of $11.5 billion for Q2, up 50% year-over-year and 13% sequentially. That's their sixth straight quarter of greater-than-30% growth, which is a pretty remarkable streak.

JORDAN: And the story underneath that number is really about data center. It's now 58% of total revenue, up from 42% a year ago. Data center segment revenue was $6.7 billion, more than doubling year-over-year. Split that in two: server CPUs — that's EPYC — grew over 70% in both cloud and enterprise, fifth consecutive quarter of record server CPU revenue. And Instinct, their AI accelerator line, more than doubled.

ALEX: Profitability kept pace too. Gross margin hit 56%, up over 200 basis points year-over-year. Operating income was $3.1 billion, a 27% operating margin. And non-GAAP diluted EPS grew about 82% year-over-year — meaningfully outpacing revenue growth.

JORDAN: That's the operating leverage story playing out in real time.

ALEX: Client and gaming was more mixed. Client — that's PCs — grew 23% to $3.1 billion on record mobile processor sales and strong commercial Ryzen PRO adoption. But gaming dropped 31% to $779 million, mostly semi-custom console revenue fading late in that console cycle, plus some pricing pressure on graphics cards from component costs.

JORDAN: Embedded was a bright spot too — up 19% to $977 million, their strongest growth in three years, with networking and defense customers leading the way.

ALEX: Now let's talk strategy, because this is where CEO Lisa Su really leaned in. The headline announcement was Helios — their new rack-scale AI platform combining EPYC Venice CPUs, MI450 GPUs, networking, and their ROCm software stack.

JORDAN: And the customer list here is the story. They already had multi-generation, gigawatt-scale commitments with OpenAI and Meta. Now add a brand-new strategic partnership with Anthropic — up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 GPUs, with the first gigawatt deploying in early 2027. There's also a joint engineering piece where Anthropic's Claude models help optimize workloads for AMD's chips.

ALEX: And Microsoft is expanding its footprint too, deploying Helios at scale on Azure for frontier model inferencing.

JORDAN: What stood out to me is how much AMD raised its own long-term targets. They now expect the AI accelerator market to hit roughly $1.4 trillion by 2030, and the server CPU market around $220 billion. Combined, they're calling the total high-performance and AI computing market close to $2 trillion by 2030.

ALEX: And Lisa Su said flatly that AMD is tracking materially ahead of the long-term model they laid out at last November's Analyst Day — revenue growth well above their prior 35% target, and EPS expected to "significantly exceed" their $20 target.

JORDAN: That's a big statement to make less than a year after setting those targets.

ALEX: Let's get into guidance. For Q3, AMD is guiding to about $13 billion in revenue, plus or minus $300 million — that's 41% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. Gross margin guided at approximately 56%.

JORDAN: And looking further out, th

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**BETA FINCH PODCAST SCRIPT**

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**ALEX:** Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown where we decode the quarterly reports so you don't have to. I'm Alex, and joining me as always is Jordan. Today we're diving into AMD's absolutely stellar Q1 2026 results that had Wall Street buzzing.

But before we jump in, I need to mention that this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Jordan, AMD just dropped some seriously impressive numbers. Walk us through the headline figures.

**JORDAN:** Alex, these results were nothing short of spectacular. AMD crushed expectations with $10.3 billion in revenue - that's 38% growth year-over-year. But here's the kicker - they're guiding for $11.2 billion in Q2, which would be 46% year-over-year growth. Their data center business is absolutely on fire, hitting a record $5.8 billion, up 57% from last year.

**ALEX:** And the profitability story is even better, right? I saw some incredible cash flow numbers.

**JORDAN:** Exactly! Free cash flow more than tripled to a record $2.6 billion - that's 25% of revenue. Earnings per share jumped 43% to $1.37. Lisa Su called it "a clear inflection in our growth trajectory and a structural shift in our business." Data center is now their primary growth driver, which is a massive change from just a few years ago.

**ALEX:** Now, the really interesting story here seems to be what AMD is calling the "Agentic AI" revolution. Jordan, they literally doubled their server CPU market size projection in just six months. How does that happen?

**JORDAN:** It's pretty remarkable, Alex. Back in November at their analyst day, they projected the server CPU market would grow at about 18% annually to around $60 billion by 2030. Now they're saying it'll grow at over 35% annually, reaching more than $120 billion by 2030.

Lisa Su explained it perfectly - as AI adoption scales and you get more inference workloads and AI agents, you need dramatically more CPU compute for orchestration, data processing, and managing these AI workloads. It's not just about the GPUs anymore.

**ALEX:** And AMD is positioned perfectly for this, aren't they? They're seeing massive growth in both their server CPUs and their AI accelerators.

**JORDAN:** Absolutely. Their EPYC server CPU business grew over 50% year-over-year, and they're guiding for over 70% growth in Q2. They're gaining market share against Intel while also benefiting from this expanding market. Plus, they landed some massive AI partnerships - they announced deals with Meta for up to 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs and expanded their OpenAI partnership.

**ALEX:** Six gigawatts? That's... that's a lot of computing power. Put that in perspective for our listeners.

**JORDAN:** To put it simply, that's enough power to run a small city! These are multi-year, multi-billion dollar commitments. AMD is becoming a core infrastructure partner for the world's biggest AI companies. And the exciting part is Lisa Su mentioned they're seeing demand forecasts exceeding their initial plans, with visibility all the way down to which specific data centers these chips are going into.

**ALEX:** Now, it wasn't all perfect news. There were some headwinds mentioned, particularly around memory costs and China. Can you break that down?

**JORDAN:** Right, so memory prices are inflating across the industry, which is impacting both costs and consumer demand. AMD expects this to hurt PC and gaming demand in the second half of the year. They also saw their AI GPU revenue decline slightly in Q1 due to lower China sales, though that's more of a geographic mix shift than a fundamen

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**BETA FINCH PODCAST SCRIPT**

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**ALEX:** Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, and I'm here with my co-host Jordan to dive into AMD's blockbuster Q4 2025 earnings call. Before we get started, I want to remind everyone that this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN:** Thanks Alex. And wow, what a quarter for AMD! Let me start with the headline numbers because they're pretty impressive. Q4 revenue hit $10.3 billion, up 34% year-over-year, and for the full year they reached a record $34.6 billion in revenue. Net income jumped 42% to $2.5 billion in the quarter.

**ALEX:** Those are strong numbers across the board. But what really caught my attention was their data center segment performance. Jordan, can you break down what's happening there?

**JORDAN:** Absolutely. The data center segment was the star of the show with $5.4 billion in revenue, up 39% year-over-year. What's fascinating is they're seeing growth on two fronts - their traditional EPYC server CPUs are crushing it, and their AI GPU business with the Instinct chips is really starting to ramp up.

**ALEX:** And Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, seemed particularly bullish about their AI prospects. She mentioned they're targeting tens of billions in AI revenue by 2027. That's a pretty bold claim.

**JORDAN:** It is bold, but they've got some big partnerships backing it up. The most notable is their multi-generation deal with OpenAI to deploy six gigawatts of Instinct GPUs. That's massive scale we're talking about. And they're expecting their next-gen MI450 chips and Helios platform to start shipping in the second half of 2026.

**ALEX:** Let's talk about that China situation though, because that added some complexity to the numbers. They had $390 million in revenue from MI308 sales to China in Q4, which wasn't in their original guidance.

**JORDAN:** Right, and that's important context. Those were from licenses approved earlier in 2025, and they're only forecasting another $100 million from China in Q1. Beyond that, they're not providing any guidance on China revenue because of the regulatory uncertainty. So investors should view those China numbers as essentially one-time benefits rather than recurring revenue.

**ALEX:** The other segment that really impressed me was their client and gaming business. $3.9 billion in revenue, up 37% year-over-year. Their Ryzen processors seem to be gaining serious market share.

**JORDAN:** That's a great point, Alex. What I found interesting is they're not just competing on the consumer side - they're making real inroads in commercial PCs. Their Ryzen CPU sell-through for commercial notebooks and desktops grew over 40% year-over-year. That's typically a stickier, higher-margin market.

**ALEX:** Speaking of margins, let's talk about profitability. Their gross margin hit 57% in Q4, though that included a one-time inventory reserve release. Even adjusting for that, they were at about 55%, which is still solid.

**JORDAN:** And Jean Hu, their CFO, seemed confident about margin progression going forward. She mentioned they're benefiting from favorable product mix across all their businesses - newer generation products in data center, moving up-market in client, and recovery in their embedded business.

**ALEX:** The Q&A session had some interesting moments too. One analyst asked about supply constraints for their server CPUs, and Lisa Su acknowledged they've been increasing supply capacity because demand has been so strong.

**JORDAN:** That's a good problem to have, but it does raise questions about whether they can meet all the demand they

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More earnings analysis: https://betafinch.com
Groups: CHIPS (https://betafinch.com/groups/CHIPS)
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ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown, coming to you fresh off Applied Materials' fiscal third quarter 2026 report. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan. Before we dive in — this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: And this was a big one, Alex. Applied Materials just posted the highest quarter-over-quarter revenue growth in company history.

ALEX: Let's start with the numbers. Q3 revenue came in at $9.1 billion — up 15% sequentially and 25% year-over-year. Non-GAAP gross margin hit 50.4%, and operating margin expanded to a record 34%. EPS was $3.50, up 41% year-over-year.

JORDAN: And it's not slowing down — Q4 guidance is $10.25 billion, plus or minus $500 million, which would be up 51% year-over-year. EPS guide of $4.02, up 85% year-over-year. Those are eye-popping growth rates for a company this size.

ALEX: The story here is really AI infrastructure. CEO Gary Dickerson framed it as two races happening at once: a race for technology leadership and a race for capacity. Chipmakers can't build fast enough to meet AI demand.

JORDAN: Right, and Applied's positioned right at the intersection — leading-edge foundry logic, DRAM, and advanced packaging. Management said those three areas represent roughly 80% of wafer fab equipment growth in both 2026 and 2027. DRAM revenue alone grew 52% year-over-year, and packaging revenue is now expected to grow more than 70% for the calendar year.

ALEX: What stood out to me was the visibility. CFO Brice Hill said some customers are now giving them rolling eight-quarter forecasts, and in some cases conversations stretching out to 2030.

JORDAN: That's unusual for this industry, which has historically been pretty cyclical and choppy. Longer-term agreements mean Applied can plan supply chain and manufacturing capacity with much more confidence. They're actually building toward doubling their quarterly system output by 2028.

ALEX: Doubling. That's a serious bet on sustained demand.

JORDAN: And to be fair, management was careful to clarify that's a capacity statement, not a revenue forecast — an analyst pushed on that directly during Q&A. But it tells you how confident they are that this isn't a short-term spike.

ALEX: Let's talk strategy for a second — the EPIC Center. Applied is opening a new R&D facility in Silicon Valley where they co-locate with customers and partners to speed up innovation. They've now got 11 announced partners, including a new one this quarter — Broadcom — plus SCREEN and UC Berkeley.

JORDAN: The logic is pretty simple: get designed into next-generation chip architectures earlier, and you capture more value and get better visibility into what customers actually need five, even ten years out. Gary Dickerson said some of these technology conversations go out a decade.

ALEX: Now, gross margins were a hot topic in the Q&A — multiple analysts pressed on this.

JORDAN: Yeah, a few different angles. One, why margins are guided roughly flat near-term despite all this growth — and the answer was ramp costs. They're hiring aggressively, over 1,500 people added this quarter alone in manufacturing and service support, and that creates a temporary headwind even as segment mix improves.

ALEX: And two, this value-based pricing strategy Brice talked about. Essentially, Applied re-prices tools based on the value they deliver rather than just cost-plus, and that's added about 300 basis points to company gross margins over the last three years.

JORDAN: Segment-level margins are already north of 55% in semiconductor systems, which is genuinely strong for an equipment maker. And services — Applied Global Services — had a great quarter too

This episode includes AI-generated content.