AMD downgraded to Hold from Buy at Jefferies

Jefferies downgraded AMD (AMD) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $120, down from $135. The firm cites the company’s “limited traction” in artificial intelligence, its belief Street estimates are too high, and expectations of mounting competition from Intel (INTC) for the downgrade. Jefferies’ benchmarking report suggests real-world throughput of Nvidia’s (NVDA) H200 across a range of open-source models is substantially higher than AMD’s MI300x, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm believes the results underscore the importance of Nvidia’s mature software stack for managing GPU efficiencies, and says this gap will widen as system performance becomes more important. AMD has “considerable ground to cover” before its products can compete with Nvidia, Jefferies contends.