What happened

AMD (AMD 1.33%) shareholders outperformed the market by a wide margin last month. Shares ended up exactly where they started even as the S&P 500 declined 12.5%, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

That flat result added to a good year for owners of the chip giant, which is up slightly so far in 2020. Shares trounced the market in both 2019 and 2018.

An engineer wearing gloves works on a chip.

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

Investors were happy to hear a positive business update from management early in the month. CEO Lisa Su and her team said they have a packed pipeline of new tech on the way, including the first processors built from its Zen 3 core along with new gaming and data center technologies. "AMD is well positioned to drive sustained growth in the PC and gaming markets," executives said at their annual investor conference on March 5. 

Now what

AMD noted that the impact of COVID-19 was only modest on the first quarter, which runs through late March. That impact likely grew in the following weeks, when economic disruption from containment measures struck Europe and North America beginning in mid-March.

Investors will get more details about the tech giant's outlook when it posts those results, along with an update to its 2020 forecast, around April 30.