AMD Perplexes Analysts With a 12% Jump on ‘Well Known’ News

(Bloomberg) -- The biggest move in Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares in seven weeks led to some head scratching on Wall Street.

The stock rallied 12 percent Tuesday as Google unveiled its video-game streaming service that will use AMD processors, even though analysts said the chipmaker’s involvement was already known. AMD Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said during a presentation at the CES trade show in January that its graphics processors would be used as part of Google’s gaming project.

“We are surprised by the stock price move as we believed this was a well known win,” RBC’s Mitch Steves wrote in a research note after Google’s presentation.

Susquehanna analyst Chris Rolland found the move so surprising that he was compelled to mention it in a note about rival Nvidia Corp.’s investor day, which also took place Tuesday. “We don’t know why AMD was up so much as most analysts knew of this win already,” said Rolland.

--With assistance from Ian King.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeran Wittenstein in San Francisco at jwittenstei1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net

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