AMD Stock Is Having Its Best Year In A Decade — And CEO Lisa Su Gets $36M Equity Reward To Match

• Su will receive a $36 million equity grant on Aug. 15.
• Other key executives also received stock as part of the company’s new compensation plan.
• Chip stocks declined sharply on Wednesday without any fundamental triggers, and retail traders are seeing this as a shift in positioning.

Advanced Micro Devices stock rallied sharply in the first half of the year, and the chipmaker just awarded a handsome stock payout to its chief executive, Lisa Su.

Su will receive a $36 million equity grant on Aug. 15, according to an exchange filing on Wednesday. The award, part of the company’s new executive compensation plan effective from July, consists of 75% performance-based restricted stock units (PRSUs) and 25% time-based RSUs.

The PRSUs vest based primarily on AMD’s total shareholder return (TSR) relative to S&P 500 companies over a three-year performance period ending in August 2029, with payouts ranging from 0% to 250% of target.

Separately, Su’s annual base salary will increase from $1.32 million to $1.38 million, according to the filing.

Other key executives also received stock. CTO Mark Papermaster received $10 million in stock units, CFO Jean Hu received $10 million in stock units, and executive vice president and general manager of the data center solutions business, Forrest Norrod, received $8 million in equity units.

AMD’s AI CPU Strength 

AMD’s revenue jumped 38% to $10.25 billion in its fiscal first quarter, beating expectations, with the data center business expanding 57%. The chipmaker's current quarter revenue of $11.2 billion, plus or minus $300 million, is also higher than analysts’ targets.

Analysts perceive AMD as best positioned to benefit from surging CPU demand in AI data centers, although it faces intense competition from Intel.

AMD stock is up 152% year-to-date, on track for its best annual performance since 2016, while Intel shares have gained 244%. The chips benchmark, iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), has doubled over this period.

Retail View On Chip Stocks

Chip stocks declined sharply on Wednesday without any fundamental triggers, and retail traders are seeing this as a shift in positioning. 

A trader posted on the SOXX stream on Stocktwits: “broad-based selling across semis, not isolated weakness. Index-level momentum rolling over pretty fast, likely some de-risking happening all at once across the sector... Moves like this usually aren’t about a single headline. It’s more like positioning and sentiment flipping at the same time.”

Still, retail sentiment for AMD remained ‘bullish.’ The sentiment for INTC dipped to ‘neutral’ from ‘bullish,’ while that for SOXX moved in the reverse direction.

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