It may be a squeaker, but AMD has passed Intel's market cap for the first time in the company's history, with AMD's cap weighing in at ~$197.75 billion at the close of the market on February 15 while Intel's market cap is currently at $197.24 billion. AMD's sudden market cap surge comes on the back of its blockbuster $49 billion acquisition of Xilinx , the largest semiconductor acquisition in history.
AMD's higher market cap resulted from its acquisition of Xilinx, which triggered the conversion of 248.38 million Xilinx shares into 428 million new AMD shares. Added to AMD's existing 1.2 billion shares , that brings the company's overall share count to 1.628 million, giving AMD a market cap of $197.75 billion that squeaks past Intel by a mere $51 million. (There might be some variance in calculations from the various third parties, but all should place AMD in the lead over Intel at current stock valuations.)
That marks a stark reversal for a company that was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy a mere six years ago when it first unveiled its revolutionary Zen CPU microarchitecture . Six years of relentless execution later, AMD now has an all-time high share of the CPU market, giving it the cash to ink the biggest semiconductor deal in history.
The company's recent acquisition of FPGA-maker Xilinx brings a broad portfolio of differentiated silicon products under the company's umbrella, opening up new, profitable climes like automated driving, aerospace, 5G/communications, and IoT markets, to name a few.
Xilinx is a healthy company, too, as its recent 3Q earnings included a record quarterly revenue of $1 billion, a 26% increase year-over-year. Meanwhile, Intel's comparable unit, its Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) that sprung from its $16.7 billion Altera acquisition, has had more than its fair share of struggles over the last few years as Xilinx has eaten away at its market share. Intel also revealed during its last earnings call that its PSG unit has been abnormally impacted by supply constraints over the course of 2021, causing a predicted loss of $500 million in additional revenue.
Meanwhile, AMD is hitting the ground running with Xilinx — the company expects its first 'blended' products, meaning devices with both AMD and Xilinx logic, to come to market in 2023.
Times are good for AMD, it also surpassed Qualcomm on the market cap list, but Nvidia is also having a stellar run as well — the company's $662.38 billion market cap exceeds both AMD and Intel, combined.
AMD's new market cap is a far cry from July 2020 when the company's stock price surpassed Intel's for the first time in 15 years but it only had a market cap of $74 billion compared to Intel's $260 billion. Back then, Intel's stock was worth $61.57 compared to AMD's $61.79, but the picture is quite a bit different now with Intel's stock weighing in at $48.44 compared to AMD's $121.47.