AMD, Nvidia lead chips higher as investors continue to move back into sector
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AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) were among the largest gainers in the semiconductor industry on Thursday as investors continued to flock to the sector after the former's quarterly results were not as bad as feared.
AMD (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) each gained around 4% in mid-day trading, continuing yesterday's surge after AMD (AMD) said it expects continued growth in the data center. 
Led by CEO Dr. Lisa Su, AMD (AMD) said it expects first-quarter sales to be in a range of $5B to $5.6B, which would be about 10% less than the same period a year ago. On a conference call with analysts, Su said that AMD (AMD) expects its data center and embedded systems businesses to remain strong, and weakness to persist in its PC and gaming divisions.
"Our largest growth driver is the data center," Su said. "We're positive on what we can do [in the data center] and will watch the macro [economic environment] on client [PCs] and gaming."
Bank of America Securities analyst Vivek Arya called AMD's (AMD) outlook a "mixed bag", but that an anticipated ramp up in server sales "should rejuvenate" earnings in the second half of the year.
Arya, who estimates that AMD's (AMD) server business can grow at least 20% this year from 2022, has a buy ratings and $82-a-share price target on the company's stock.
At Piper Sandler, analyst Harsh Kumar said he was "enthused" by AMD's (AMD) outlook, and that the "most important and notable items" from the company's report are that AMD (AMD) expects data center and PC sales to bottom out in the first quarter of this year and then begin to head north.
Along with its outlook, AMD (AMD) also said that for its 2022 fourth quarter it earned 69 cents a share on $5.6B in revenue.
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) shares rose by a similar amount on Thursday even as the company received its second debt ratings downgrade in two days.
Ratings agency Fitch downgraded Intel (INTC) to A- or F2, from A+ or F1, with outlook "negative." 
On Wednesday, S&P also revised its outlook on Intel (INTC), cutting its rating to A from A+ with a outlook "negative." 
Micron (NASDAQ:MU) shares rebounded from earlier losses even after it was reported that spot prices for dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, have continued to fall.
Qorvo (QRVO) fell 4.6% after it reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter results but issued a weak outlook for the next quarter.
Qorvo (QRVO), which gets roughly 30% of its revenue from Apple (AAPL), said it expects fiscal fourth-quarter sales to be between $600M and $640M, well below the $72.88M analysts were expecting.
Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) and Cirrus Logic (CRUS), which also generate a high percentage of their respective sales from smartphones, rose 1.5% and 1.9%, respectively.
Other industry stalwarts were largely higher on Thursday, with Texas Instruments (TXN), Analog Devices (ADI) and OB Semiconductor (ON) among the standouts. 
Qualcomm (QCOM) saw fractional losses on Thursday, bucking the trend.
On Wednesday, Craig Hallum analyst Christian Schwab downgraded his rating on AMD (AMD) to hold from buy on concerns about the rate of the company's revenue growth.