Forex

AMD, the perpetual No. 2 of PC chipmakers, had been finally making some inroads against archrival Intel earlier this decade. But it stumbled the past couple of years as it failed to deliver its next-generation Opteron and Phenom chips on time. Development and debt costs rose last year while revenues fell as AMD was forced to make price cuts on existing chips.

Making matters worse, AMD admitted that it paid too much for graphics card-maker ATI in 2006 and took a $1.6 billion charge related to that deal. But with its new chips finally hitting the shelves this March, CEO Hector Ruiz has optimistically written off 2007 as a "transitional year."