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Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) has been a top performer in the semiconductor industry over the last decade. The fabless chip stock has grabbed market share from Intel PCs and is now competing in the data center AI graphics processing unit (GPU) market, though Nvidia remains the dominant force in that industry. It's also known for its strength in gaming chips.
AMD has grown over the years both organically and through acquisitions like Xilinx, a $50 billion deal that set an industry record. Xilinx is primarily focused on embedded chips that power appliances, consumer electronics, and complex machinery in industries like automotive, aerospace, and defense.
AMD has split its stock in the past, but it hasn't done so since 2000.
AMD's stock split history
The chart below shows that the company has had six stock splits in its history.
| Stock Split Payment Date | Split Ratio |
|---|---|
| Oct. 25, 1978 | 3-for-2 |
| Oct. 24, 1979 | 3-for-2 |
| Sept. 22, 1980 | 2-for-1 |
| Sept. 27, 1982 | 3-for-2 |
| July 22, 1983 | 2-for-1 |
| Aug. 07, 2000 | 2-for-1 |
Source: AMD.
As you can see, most of AMD's stock splits are ancient history at this point. They occurred shortly after the company went public in 1972 and was growing quickly. The last one occurred toward the end of the dot-com era in 2000.
Following the dot-com bust, AMD struggled for several years before it started to find success in the mid-2010s under CEO Lisa Su. It converted itself into a fabless chip company in 2009, when it spun off GlobalFoundries and, under Su, focused on high-performance computing applications, capitalizing on the emergence of areas like cloud computing, data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), and gaming.
Over the last decade, the stock has soared under Su's leadership, up nearly 5,000% and overtaking rival Intel in market cap. However, 2024 was a rough year for the stock as high hopes for its AI chips haven't been met by sales from the new MI300 accelerator, and growth in the rest of the business has been moderate. It has yet to capitalize on the AI boom the way some of its peers have.
Will a stock split help AMD?
Before we discuss the chances of an AMD stock split, investors should have a full understanding of the implications of a stock split.
A stock split doesn't do anything to change the fundamentals of a stock or the business. It simply makes a proportionate change in the share count and price, like cutting a pie into more pieces. Individual investors still own the same percentage of the company as they did before.
However, investors still cheer stock splits as they generally reflect management's confidence in the business's future growth. There's also some evidence that stocks tend to outperform the S&P 500 in the 12 months after the stock split. It's not fully clear why, but it could be the strength of the business coming into the split and the investor response to the news creating a self-fulfilling cycle.