ATI in the red
Graphics card manufacturer issues profits warning
Canadian graphics card company ATI has issued its second profit warning in as many months, with revenues expected to plummet to $230m for the last three months. This is 60% down on the same period last year, and losses are likely to be four times worse than previously anticipated, compared to a profit of $45m this time last year. ATI has been facing increasingly stiff competition from NVIDIA in the last year, and the company is now struggling. The recent announcement from NVIDIA of GeForce cards for the Mac has put a further hole in ATI's fortunes, as previously it had enjoyed a virtual strangehold on the Apple graphics market. The company's share price had slipped almost 20% to a new all-time low of around $4.20 at the time of writing.
Interestingly ATI are saying that they expect things to get better towards the end of 2001 as new products arrive, while poor PC sales and higher costs for memory are being blamed for the recent losses. But if they don't have any major new graphics cards in the pipeline for before the end of the year, NVIDIA are just going to stretch out even more of a performance lead by the time they appear.