AMD CEO: Coronavirus Will Have 'Modest' Impact, Guidance Unchanged

'What we have seen is, outside of China, overall demand has actually been about what we expected for the first quarter,' AMD CEO Lisa Su says of the impact from coronavirus.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company expects a "modest" impact on revenue from the ongoing coronavirus crisis, but it hasn't impacted the company's short-term and long-term revenue forecasts.

"From the demand standpoint again, this is a very fluid situation, so there are lots of puts and takes," she said Thursday during AMD's Financial Analyst Day, where the company revealed its CDNA data center GPU architecture and updated roadmaps for its Ryzen and EPYC processors.

[Related: Antonio Neri: HPE Has Set Up ‘War Rooms’ To Battle Coronavirus Component Shortages]

Because the company expects a soft impact, AMD has not changed its first-quarter revenue forecast of $1.8 billion, plus or minus $50 million. However, Su said, the company expects revenue will likely fall on the lower side of its guidance. Most of the impact will come from lower demand in China, where coronavirus began and has taken a large toll on the country's population and economy.

"What we have seen is, outside of China, overall demand has actually been about what we expected for the first quarter," Su said. "In China, we have seen some reduction in consumer demand, particularly the offline channel network. Those I think will continue for some time."

At the same time, however, the CEO said, "the demand for infrastructure has increased beyond what we expected originally," referring to the chipmaker's data center products.

AMD's supply chain remains "very robust," Su said, even though the company largely relies on operations in China, Malaysia and Taiwan. So far, the company has been able to get through the situation relatively unscathed thanks to a "number of actions" AMD has taken, she added.

"Based on what we see today, we're actually back to near normal supply capacity in our supply chains, so that is something that we will be very focused on," Su said.

But beyond supply and demand issues, the CEO said the company's employees, partners and customers are the top concern as the coronavirus outbreak continues.

"Our first priority, of course, like all of our colleagues, is to ensure the health and safety of our employees and our partners and our customers," Su said. "And so that is our focus, and we have taken steps to minimize potential exposure at our global sites and with travel, like most of our peer companies have."

With more than 95,000 people infected and more than 3,200 people dead across the world, novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues to have broad impact on the tech industry. Most recently, distributors Ingram Micro and Synnex said they were postponing or delays upcoming shows out of caution.