The last six months have not been kind to the share price. After a spectacular surge, it ended the period exactly where it began.

As we pointed out in our previous results commentary, 2023 marked the first period of decline in eight years for the microprocessor and graphics card manufacturer, which was also experiencing a significant contraction in margins.

It didn't take much for sourpusses - whose ranks we half-confess to having been tempted to join - to point the finger at the extraordinary risks taken at the time by investors ready to overextend themselves. investors ready to outbid a stock that was already trading at over two hundred times earnings.

If they don't reflect a sensational rebound, at least the results for the first half of 2024 will cheer up the bold: AMD's revenues are up 5.5%, margins are back on track, and forecasts for the second half have been revised upwards.

The exceptional health of the data center segment - where revenues are up 115% on the same period last year - is reassuring, with the release of the Instinct GPU clearly very much appreciated. The client segment, meanwhile, recorded a 49% increase in revenues, thanks to the Ryzen CPU.

By contrast, the Group's other two segments - gaming and embedded solutions - saw a sharp fall. So it is indeed investments in artificial intelligence and supercomputing - that are underpinning the overall dynamic.

This should reassure Nvidia shareholders, whose half-yearly results are due at the end of August. In the eye of the storm, the group headed by Jensen Huang has wiped out a thousand billion dollars in market capitalization since its June highs.

Inevitably, this correction was needed to purge a speculative fever that had gotten out of hand. However, good results from AMD and TSMC earlier this month indicate that business fundamentals remain solid, and the market is still in strong demand.