AMD has hired JPMorgan to "explore options"

[georgec84]

What if this is all a master plan by AMD that precedes their roaring comeback?

One can only dream...

 

[notty22]

Exclusive: AMD hires bank to explore options - sources

AMD's shares have fallen more than 60 percent this year, giving it a market value of about $1.4 billion. It also has long-term debt and capital lease obligations of about $2 billion..........
..........................
Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents.Goldman Sachs analyst James Covello estimated in a recent note to clients the chances of AMD's PC processor business being sold are between 15 percent and 30 percent.

 

[HypX]

I think what he meant to say is that the company is undervalued on an Adjusted Net Book value calculation (i.e., you adjust all the assets and liabilities to their respective market values). Also, the net tangible assets exclude any intangible assets such as goodwill, patents and trademarks. That's the point he is making that if you were to take the company and do an orderly liquidation, it is worth more than the $2 market value.

Not sure if I follow everything you wrote (you clearly know more about finance than I do). However, you usually can't sell "goodwill" on your balance sheet, but you do have to deal with long term debt in such a case, unless I'm mistaken. A liquidation sale will get you pennies on the dollar at best. Actually, an orderly liquidation will mean most of the money will go to the bondholders, so if that's what we're talking about he'll lose nearly everything!

Also, the company was trading at $1.82 on November 21, 2008 and has rebounded to $7-9 range on many occasions. His point is it's not time to panic yet wrt to orderly liquidation/piece-by-piece sale of the firm. The stock's RSI has also fluctuated from 9-30 since June 2012, signalling significant downward selling pressure, which is evident by a very large short-interest on this stock. The $2 price is not necessarily reflective of a proper valuation of the firm. Right now the short-sellings have control, the market trends are negative for the PC market and the global economy is not doing well at all. It's understandable that companies in the tech industry with a poor balance sheet position and poor growth prospects would be especially vulnerable.

I'm not sure you can bring up the stock price of any company November of 2008 as a valid comparison. You do remember what was happening back then? The current price is much more telling of reality than it was then.

Mate, AMD's current market valuation is $1.5bn - their cash reserve alone is equal to that, not to mention the value of their IP and other assets. What debt they do have is nearly all long-term, making it fairly inconsequential.

I'm pretty sure their IP and other assets, like what's left of ATI, are already included in their assets. Cash reserves about half of what you say they are, if I'm reading it right. Not saying AMD can't be worth 1.5 billion, but that would be the market deciding that. There's nothing inside of AMD that suggests it's worth that much. Best case scenario for stock holders right now would be AMD or a part of it getting bought out by someone who's willing to deal with AMD's IP headaches and will overpay for it.

 

[GreenChile]

Exclusive: AMD hires bank to explore options - sources

Really? They drop below their optimal cash target and respond by lowering the bar? That's as bad as the US Govt raising the debt ceiling every time they run out of money.

AMD's cash declined $279 million in the third quarter to $1.48 billion. AMD said it was reducing its "optimal" cash target to $1.1 billion from $1.5 billion due to the business' now smaller size

.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Even if someone buys AMD, will Intel be willing to renegotiate the x86 license?

Not a chance. Intel has never been amicable with anything to my knowledge. The only way Intel would do so was if they were forced via government intervention.

As it is, Intel retains all rights to the x86-64 patents in the event of AMD going bankrupt, with it being unclear whether anyone else can pick up the x86-64 licence from an AMD Firesale.

Got a source for this? My memory is fuzzy when it comes to the revised AMD/Intel settlement agreement.

 

[Centauri]

Cash reserves about half of what you say they are, if I'm reading it right.

You're not.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Got a source for this? My memory is fuzzy when it comes to the revised AMD/Intel settlement agreement.

When their new agreement was brokered, there was of course a lot of discussion about this and copies of parts of the agreement were floating around, but when I looked for it the other day, I couldn't find much.

 

[HypX]

You're not.

Consider me corrected then.

They still have too much debt on books though. I stand by my claim that their shares are overpriced still.

 

[GreenChile]

Got a source for this? My memory is fuzzy when it comes to the revised AMD/Intel settlement agreement.

This is from the FTC agreement with Intel regarding the AMD/Intel settlement. I've highlighted the pertinent information. http://www.ftc.gov/os/adjpro/d9341/100804inteldo.pdf

If AMD is bought out, they must enter into negotiations regarding future cross license agreements and they are prevented from suing for one year.

B. In the event the Designated Intel Competitor undergoes a “change of control” (as
defined in the relevant Designated Intel Competitor Patent Agreement) that is
publicly announced or a Designated Intel Competitor otherwise notifies
Respondent that it has undergone a change of control within five (5) days of such
change of control:
1. for a period of thirty (30) days from the date of the change of control,
Respondent shall not initiate patent litigation against the party acquiring
the Designated Intel Competitor (“Acquiring Entity”) with respect to
products previously manufactured by or acquired from the Designated
Intel Competitor, unless the Designated Intel Competitor and/or the
Acquiring Entity or another entity controlled by one of them has first filed
any suit against Respondent;
2. within ten (10) days from the date of the change of control, Respondent
shall offer to enter into a written, reciprocal Standstill Agreement with the
Acquiring Entity, such Standstill Agreement to comprise the following
terms:
a. Respondent and the Acquiring Entity shall enter into good faith
negotiations regarding the future patent relationship, if any,
between them;
b. to facilitate those good faith negotiations, for a period of one year
from the change of control, neither Respondent nor the Acquiring
Entity (or any Affiliate of either of them) shall initiate patent
litigation against the other or any Affiliate thereof;

 

[AnandThenMan]

When their new agreement was brokered, there was of course a lot of discussion about this and copies of parts of the agreement were floating around, but when I looked for it the other day, I couldn't find much.

Well you did say this quite emphatically:

As it is, Intel retains all rights to the x86-64 patents in the event of AMD going bankrupt, with it being unclear whether anyone else can pick up the x86-64 licence from an AMD Firesale.

You can read some of the new agreement here and here (PDF file)

Skimming over that info, what I get out of it is either AMD or Intel can cancel the cross patent agreement providing they give 60 days notice. If either company changes ownership beyond a certain criteria, the agreement is null. I don't know what happens if AMD goes under for good, but whatever happens to AMD they will be bought up by someone, and at that point the cross licensing agreement will have to be renegotiated. Either way it does not appear to be correct to say that Intel automatically has all rights to anything AMD64 related.

...then again I could be wrong because I don't speak legal babble.

 

[tviceman]

ATi is wortless

ATI is not worthless. Their tech is sound. It's AMD and it's management that is ruining all of the potential ATI has.

 

[GreenChile]

You can read some of the new agreement here and here (PDF file)

Skimming over that info, what I get out of it is either AMD or Intel can cancel the cross patent agreement providing they give 60 days notice. If either company changes ownership beyond a certain criteria, the agreement is null. I don't know what happens if AMD goes under for good, but whatever happens to AMD they will be bought up by someone, and at that point the cross licensing agreement will have to be renegotiated. Either way it does not appear to be correct to say that Intel automatically has all rights to anything AMD64 related.

...then again I could be wrong because I don't speak legal babble.

That first link is the old cross license dated 2001. The new agreement is confidential and not available publicly. Your second link is the settlement agreement, not the cross license agreement.

 

[Siberian]

I don't think GCN (or any of the GPU silicon) is to blame for any ground given up to Nvidia. It seems like along the road, if there was a right path to take or a wrong path to take, regarding everything other than the GPU world (that is the CPU side and business decisions), AMD took the wrong direction. Selling their mobile division. Having a lesson on high IPC vs. going for high clock speed/low IPC right in front of their noses, even being on the winning side of things in the P4/A64 days, yet Bulldozer is what they launch. And of course the price they paid for ATI may ultimately be what hurts AMD more than anything.

They got beat by NVIDIA's smaller midrange chip. That may be even wose than Bulldozer.

 

[AnandThenMan]

You are correct. Can't seem to find the new agreement, I know some of it was released I remember reading it. Doesn't matter either way because AMD doesn't have much if any future in x86. And if anyone purchases AMD, the agreement will be renegotiated anyway. Which probably means Intel will become the only provider of x86 processors.

The only hope for consumers not being bent over by the Intel monopoly is ARM.

 

[Rvenger]

They got beat by NVIDIA's smaller midrange chip. That may be even wose than Bulldozer.

Yeah, they are so bad they now have a good 10% average lead on Nvidia. You must be immune to recent news.

 

[Dark Shroud]

They got beat by NVIDIA's smaller midrange chip. That may be even wose than Bulldozer.

Beat how?

The 7970 Ghz is faster than the GTX 680 in gaming and the entire 600 series GPUs are under powered when it comes to GPGPU thanks to their new architecture.

Add into that Nvidia's memory controller isn't even good enough for the GTX 670 & GTX 680 to fully use 4GB of memory. And of course the 660 TI's memory buss issues.

Nvidia is not beating AMD. It's always amusing to see the fan boy delusions in these situations.

 

[Regs]

Consider me corrected then.

They still have too much debt on books though. I stand by my claim that their shares are overpriced still.

A lot of companies leverage debt from operations in the hopes that the investments would payoff more than the interest bearing long term debt. So no matter how much debt any company has, if you don't have the cash flow to pay off your debts, than you run the risk of bankruptcy.

 

[ViRGE]

I think I speak for everyone when I say "Aww crap".

 

[Arachnotronic]

They got beat by NVIDIA's smaller midrange chip. That may be even wose than Bulldozer.

Nvidia was smart to make a gaming-focused chip to keep die sizes small, power consumption low, and gross-margins high.

The compute-oriented beast Kepler is selling for $3K+

 

[AnandThenMan]

I think I speak for everyone when I saw "Aww crap".

There are more than a few people that would like to see AMD go out of business even though they would never admit it.

 

[mrmt]

Consider me corrected then.

They still have too much debt on books though. I stand by my claim that their shares are overpriced still.

Valuation for a continued operation isn't the same of valuation for liquidation /asset sale. Do you think that the stock is overpriced for the former case, the later case or both?

 

[dkm777]

Excellent news on the day I received my 7970! Fu(n)k my life.

 

[HypX]

Valuation for a continued operation isn't the same of valuation for liquidation /asset sale. Do you think that the stock is overpriced for the former case, the later case or both?

At this point it would be both. A liquidation sale would be after AMD declares bankruptcy, which would imply that they continue to burn money until there's nothing left. Which means AMD would be worth next to nothing at that point. Problem is, the way things are going that would be inevitable anyways. Perhaps even as early as late 2013.

As of right now, the only real value AMD has is a bet that they'll manage to come up with something special and save themselves (ARM related for the most part). That's the only thing justifying even the $2 stock price. However no one would pay money to buy the company purely for that reason. Even worse the IP tangle AMD is in makes that even harder. So unless someone, like perhaps a Chinese company, who is willing to pay extra for access to certain markets and previously unaccessible IPs, and is willing to deal with the headache of buying AMD, then the stock for all intent and purposes is worth very little.

 

[mrmt]

At this point it would be both

A sale for liquidation means that they can tap value they usually can't such as their patent portfolio, so unless you are implying that their entire patent portfolio is worth less than 1.4 billion, I don't see the stock overpriced for liquidation, but I agree that for a continued operation the stock is.

 

[squirrel dog]

Not good.I for one do not want to see Intel without a competitor.