Semiconductor stocks were largely flat on Monday, though AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) continued last week's outperformance following its first-quarter results and AI-linked news.
AMD (AMD) shares gained more than 5% to trade near $95 at mid-day after it was reported last week that Microsoft (MSFT) was working with AMD (AMD) on artificial intelligence processors. Initially, it was reported that Microsoft (MSFT) was financing AMD (AMD) in its push.
Nvidia (NVDA), which competes with AMD, rose 0.8%, while Intel (INTC) fell 1.3%.
Separately on Monday, Intel (INTC) confirmed that it was undergoing a fresh round of layoffs, according to Oregon Live.
In a note to clients, KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst John Vinh said recent earnings from AMD (AMD), Qualcomm (QCOM), NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) and others reflected two themes: "limited" signs of a recovery in China and Apple (AAPL) linked suppliers lowered their outlooks due to the tech giant's pull-ins and over-ordering of components between the fourth and first-quarters.
Qualcomm (QCOM) shares dipped 0.3%, while NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) rose by a similar amount.
Skyworks Solutions (NASDAQ:SWKS), which is slated to report later this week, rose 0.9%, while Qorvo (QRVO), another smartphone supplier rose 0.1%.
Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) fell around 0.5% even as Citi reiterated its buy ratings on the three largest memory chip makers - Samsung (OTCPK:SSNLF), SK Hynix and Micron - amid continuing signs the memory market will recover later this year.
Analyst Peter Lee noted that recent memory production cuts are likely to happen "gradually" and should help lower global inventories, thus leading to an average-selling price recovery for dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, after the third-quarter and after the fourth-quarter for NAND.
"...[W]e expect leading global memory makers to benefit from limited memory supply growth on industry-wide memory production cut and DDR5 demand upside in [the second-half of 2023]," Lee wrote in an investor note.
Other semiconductor stocks were oscillating between fractional gains and losses on Monday, including Texas Instruments (TXN), Analog Devices (ADI) and ON Semiconductor (ON).