AMD shares down after weak 2nd-quarter results

The stock fell 62 cents, or 12 percent, to $4.68. The shares have ranged from $4.53 to $16.19 over the past year.

Late Thursday, AMD reported a loss of 60 cents per share, worse than the per-share loss of 52 cents expected by analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Hector Ruiz, who has been CEO of AMD for six years, will be replaced by president and chief operating officer Dirk Meyer. AMD also announced it would divest its units that make chips for cell phones and digital television sets.

AMD, always much smaller than rival Intel Corp. in the market for computer processors, has had a hard time competing in the last few years. Analysts see no turnaround soon.

"We continue to believe that AMD will be unable to make any type of market-share inroads versus Intel in the middle to high end of the desktop, mobile or server processor markets" until it launches a radically new chip design in the second half of next year, wrote Michael McConnell of Pacific Crest Securities in a morning research note.

AMD's revenue in the quarter was $1.35 billion, down 7 percent from the first quarter and short of the $1.45 billion expected on Wall Street.

John Barton at Cowen & Co. attributed the revenue decline to a loss in market share, since Intel and other chip makers are reporting healthy demand.

Barton wrote that he was "encouraged" by AMD's plan to divest the cell-phone and digital television chip units, but "we maintain our conservative 'wait and see' approach since we would like to see these initiatives begin to bear fruit before becoming constructive on the shares."