Marketwatch
"The chipmaker has finally completed the spinoff of its manufacturing operation, relaunching its offshoot as GlobalFoundries early Wednesday. " http://www.thestreet.com/story/10467858/1/amd-surges-on-manufacturing-spinoff.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN
"SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. plunged more than 10% Tuesday after the company said it needs more votes for the approval of its planned spin-off." http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid={B74E4E75-9584-4BAC-9FC1-DAB2C5629BF1}&siteid=rss
US chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices said Friday it will lop 1,100 jobs and trim salaries to "navigate the turbulent economic conditions." http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090116/tc_afp/usitinternetchipeconomyfinancecompanycutsamd_20090116212326
AMD lost $67M in the quarter, but this is well below the loss of $396M a year ago. Analysts reported that AMD made progress in the quarter and that the loss was lower than expected. Market conditions are very difficult for AMD and AMD expects revenues to be flat in the fourth quarter. A revenue of $1.78B was driven by strong sales in graphics and microprocessor chips.
AMD has entered a joint venture with Advanced Technology Investment Company, a state-owned venture capital firm out of Abu Dhabi. ATIC will front $2.1B of the $5.7B joint venture, $700M of which will go directly to AMD creating much needed cash for the company. This joint venture allows AMD to focus on design to better compete with rival Intel. The new company will assume all manufacturing debt and responsibiliy o fAMD's two fabs, while building another in upstate New York. AMD expects this deal to help it stabilize its prices and most effectively compete with Intel since it no longer has to deal with the financial and operation difficulties of doing its own manufacturing. Whether or not the new fab company will be able to compete in the difficult foundry market is unknown, but the upside potential created by this deal for AMD is substantial.
AMD announces a plan to spin off its manufacturing division to save costs.
Late trades on Tuesday amounting to 1.2M shares were bought at $5.25 per share, while the high for the day had been $4.53 before that. AMD shares corrected on Wednesday by dropping 10%. It is not clear who made these late trades and why they did it at such at high price.
Worldwide semiconductor sales grew 7.6% in July 2008 compared to July 2007. This is for all semiconductor sales and not specifically AMD. The growth is attributable to strength in cellphone and PC sales in particular.
In an effort to further streamline AMD's business focus, AMD's digital TV segment is expected to be sold to Broadcom for $193M. The deal is expected to close in December 2008.
AMD's new graphics card, the HD 4870 X2, is capable of 2.4 trillion operations per second, making it one of the fastest cards in the market. This is an important step for AMD to compete with Nvidia in the lucrative gaming market.
AMD continued to lose money with a $1.19B loss in the second quarter. AMD is facing stiff competition to Intel and had key product delays. CEO Hector Ruiz stepped down as COO Dirk Meyer is now taking over.
AMD reported another write down on its graphics acquisition ATI. The write down of $880M on friday added to the write down in January of $1.6B means that ATI is now worth about 44% less than what AMD acquired it for.
Nvidia's stock has plunged as it reported margins for the upcoming quarter will be lower than expected due to global end market weakness and product delays. AMD has come out with some surprisingly good graphics chips, and its low end offering matches Nvidia on performance while costing a lot less. However, AMD is still losing to intel when it comes to CPU's. Given the current US economy, the global weakness expected by Nvidia, and the constant competition, AMD just can't catch a break and the stock is sliding.
AMD will release a new line of Radeon graphics processing units that will be capable of 1 trillion calcuations per second, or 1 teraflop. It will use about 100 - 150 watts of power and is directed at the video game and enterprise markets.
Toshiba has come out with its new notebooks that are featuring AMD's brand new platform, known as Puma. In addition, the FTC has issued an official probe investigation whether Intel violated antitrust laws.
AMD announced that it will be changing its restructuring plan so as to more effectively cut costs.
Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices is trading at five-year low Friday on a slump in the market and a negative report on its performance by Wachovia Capital Markets.
The oversupply of computer chips is expected to lead to a price war between Advanced Micro Device (AMD) and Intel Corp., which will have a negative impact on the earnings of both companies. Morgan Stanley gave a rating of ‘underweight’ to AMD and advised the investors to sell the stock.
At an analyst day presentation on July 26th, AMD said its goal to break even in the fourth quarter (it lost 600MM in Q2) was "aspirational", implying low probability of success. In addition, investors had expected AMD to announce plans to outsource the manufacturing of its chips, an option popular with investors because AMD would no longer have to spend billions to build complex chip manufacturing plants. Instead, the company said it had no plan to outsource production.
AMD stock falls 7.6% with research showing Intel re-gaining market share in the first quarter.
Stock price falls 1.2% on first quarter revenue reports.
AMD's stock price rises 6.7% on talks about a possible LBO.
