AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced today via an 8K filing that three key executives were departing the company, but did not offer any further explanation of why the trio chose to depart.

According to a statement by AMD the general manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, John Byrne, Chief Marketing Officer Colette LaForce, and Chief Strategy Officer Raj Naik left the company Tuesday. The three did not give a specific reason of why they were leaving. Byrne said that he decided “to pursue other opportunities.”

CEO Lisa Su will take over Byrne’s former role of running the computing and graphics business until his replacement can be found. AMD has not yet announced replacements for LaForce or Naik.

AMD’s statement on the matter was limited to the following:  “These changes, including the additions of Forrest Norrod and James Clifford to our management team last quarter, collectively are part of implementing an optimal organization design and leadership team to further sharpen our execution and position AMD for growth.”

AMD will be announcing its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2014 on Jan 20. More details, and better insight on where the company will be going in 2015 will be available then.

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As we had reported earlier, the race to replace Rory Read as CEO between John Byrne and Lisa Su had been heating up for quite some time and now that race is over with today’s announcement. In today’s announcement, Dr. Lisa Su replaces the current CEO Rory Read who was more of a caretaker CEO for the company as they came out from the verge of collapse under the rule of Thomas Seifert.

According to a statement from AMD’s investor relations, Read will continue to be with AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) in order to support the transition in an advisory role, remaining with the company through the end of 2014.  Su as we had previously indicated, was responsible for the company’s embedded and professional products but only held the role for a very short period of time until she became CEO. In fact, Su was the GM of Global Business units before she became in charge of that business group, which had already telegraphed that she might be in the running for CEO.

This is a continuation of the company’s restructuring as well as the first step in major restructuring this month that we had indicated late last week. Many changes are coming to AMD, and replacing Read is definitely a smart move by AMD’s board because the reality is that Su really gets the company’s products and markets. Read’s job was to keep the company moving forward and to grease the wheels as necessary and anyone that saw his role within the company could see that clearly. His days were numbered until someone like Su had been properly groomed for the position and understood how the business needs to be run from that position. In fact, much of what  Su had done before inside AMD almost seemed like a mini-CEO position which may explain why her becoming CEO is not much of a shock to anyone.

Su is also AMD’s first female CEO and once again indicates the progress within the IT industry with some of the biggest companies like Oracle, IBM, HP and many more all being led by women. While the fact that Su is a woman should not affect the company or her performance whatsoever, it is a good thing for women as a whole in the tech industry so that there are no misconceptions about what a woman is capable of in tech.

Watch below as Su talks about her new position and the direction of the company.

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Our sources are confirming to us that AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) will undergo another major restructuring of the company. This restructuring follows the recent reorganization of the company’s overall organization headed by Dr. Lisa Su and John Byrne. The latest restructuring was announced around the time of Computex and based upon a split of the company into two separate divisions. This restructuring seemed like one merely on paper, shifting over some responsibilities from one person to the other but keeping all divisions and staff intact.

Those two divisions are the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom Business Group and Computing and Graphics Business Group. As stated before, John Byrne will be responsible for the Computing and Graphics Business Group while Lisa Su will head up the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom Business Group. Now, the restructuring that is being discussed now (and supposedly already being set in motion) is supposed to be an extension of June’s reorganization/restructuring. This will very likely result in some people changing their roles within the company as well as some people being laid off, as generally seem to happen with major reorganizations. While there are no definite figures of how many people will be let go, it did not sound like those numbers were massive like the culling of 2009 through 2012.

Unfortunately, there aren’t that many details about exactly how many people could be laid off, but this sounds like a long term plan execution rather than a reactionary cut due to poor earnings. However, there were some indications that this next restructuring would very likely come after AMD’s 3Q 2014 earnings which is on the 16th. It remains to be seen how investors will react to this news, but if AMD has poor earnings for 3Q 2014, it may be seen as a reactionary restructuring rather than a planned one which is how it was interpreted by our sources. We are labeling this as a rumor because it isn’t an official announcement, however this is essentially already a done deal.

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So, AMD announced that they would be reshuffling the company’s corporate structure which includes some business unite consolidation and executive shuffling. First and foremost, they would be appointing Dr. Lisa Su as the COO from her current position as Senior Vice President and GM of Global Business Units. Anyone that knows how AMD works and what Dr. Lisa Su has been doing already knows that she’s effectively been the COO for quite some time and that the company had actually vacated that position a long time ago. Keep in mind that AMD’s current CEO, Rory Read, was once COO of Lenovo before he came from IBM (which is where Lisa Su spent most of her career before she worked at Freescale).

So, that point is merely nothing more than a technicality. Now, there have been a few organizational adjustments made within the company as they’ve consolidated the entire company into two divisions.

AMD will have a Computing and Graphics Business Group as well as an Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom Business Group. This effectively separates the professional and consumer graphics divisions as well as the consumer processors from the server processors. AMD’s current CSO, John Byrne, will be made the Senior Vice President and GM responsible for leading the entire division and will report directly to Dr. Lisa Su.

Now, for the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom Business Group, the company will have Dr. Lisa Su herself as the acting lead of the division. This includes AMD’s server, embedded, dense server and semi-custom businesses (consoles), it also includes the related product engineering and sales functions necessary for these various businesses.

There have been rumors within AMD that the company would be grooming a new CEO to replace Rory Read, their caretaker CEO. Rory Read has done exactly what he was brought on to do, keep the company stable, and more importantly, alive. We’ve been hearing rumors that John Byrne may be one of the front runners for the CEO position, which makes sense with today’s announcement even though he was already CSO. And Lisa Su’s role within the company already groomed her for the position and her involvement in the company’s public events further makes this seem plausible.

Dr. Lisa Su (center) pictured along with John Byrne (left of her) and Colette LaForce (to her right) at last week’s Computex 2014

However, there is no denying that the constant presence of both John Byrne and Lisa Su at company announcements and launches is without a clear sign that the job for CEO is effectively between the two of them. This is why I believe AMD has decided to split the company up in two and has essentially given each of them a chance to show who of them is more capable of making AMD a successful company.

One weird thing that AMD did was mention the ages of everyone involved including Rory Read (52), Lisa Su (44) and John Byrne (43), which even further clarifies that this is more of a CEO race than anything. However, some investors and members of the board may be concerned that Lisa Su and John Byrne may be ‘too young’ to run the company even though they are clearly the two most qualified people to do so. It just adds another drop into the CEO race bucket.

I honestly didn’t see it coming down to this, as normally the CEO position is mostly politically battled from within the halls of the companies in question. If this is indeed the board of AMD’s way of giving each of them a chance to show their stuff, they may have just telegraphed it to the entire world and we will probably be able to pick the next CEO of AMD purely based upon the performance of these two divisions of AMD over the next year or two. Until then, we’ll just have to keep watching. These changes will be reflected starting July 1st.

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