Could this be the end of the beginning or beginning of the end for AMD?

[Kur]

Man wasn't this discussion happening about a year ago when Intel was getting owned?

It's a back and forth thing, and always will be.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

Originally posted by: zsdersw
Isn't Santa Rosa an Intel laptop platform?

Until this week I thought Santa Rosa was only A place in California and an Opteron. The Opti has been in production since Oct 06 and on the charts in 2005.

Remember "Barcelona, Budapest, Kuma, Agena and Rana" soon to be released AM2/AM2+ chips.

I'm not sure if some of the people are wishing for AMD to go POOF or is it just a reflection of rampant half quoted news stories from uninformed sources. I agree, AMD is in the tight spot but remember this, if Intel lets the magic smoke out of AMD then Conroe and Penryn will be around for 5 more years with FSB and mobo ram controllers. I'll throw out the computers and go play golf before going back to those days.

 

[Soulkeeper]

lol this discussion has been going on for like 10yrs ....

 

[rise]

"street insider"

The investment bankers were probably laughing over and over on this one. It is a true voodoo financing and one reminiscent of past blow-ups. We aren?t just trying to kick the company while it is down, but this one takes the cake. It really must be true that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: rise
"street insider"

The investment bankers were probably laughing over and over on this one. It is a true voodoo financing and one reminiscent of past blow-ups. We aren?t just trying to kick the company while it is down, but this one takes the cake. It really must be true that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

it looks much *worse* than i thought

We encourage you to read the full SEC filing and the ?events of default? because this really allows for what could be interpreted as a noose for shareholders who have been getting kicked while they are down.
...

Shares are down 2% today to $13.54 and are all the way right back down to levels right before this financing was announced (and priced the following morning). A conspiracy theorist would probably say that the financing was to try to wrestle control or to further hold AMD hostage if things don?t get better. We?ll stop short of that because it is just a head-scratcher all the way.

they are getting killed by hi-interest and that ATi acquisition is looking to be a *disaster* - at least in the short run

if they survive ... they will be diminished

 

[SickBeast]

I remember reading some posts by an AMD employee on here about 6 months ago...I directly asked him how he felt about his company's prospects, and he pretty much said that he was very worried.

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
I remember reading some posts by an AMD employee on here about 6 months ago...I directly asked him how he felt about his company's prospects, and he pretty much said that he was very worried.

link?

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: Kur
Man wasn't this discussion happening about a year ago when Intel was getting owned?

It's a back and forth thing, and always will be.

You do realise that AMD lost everything that they gained in... ONE quarter!

Intel getting owned? please, they werent even scratched. AMD should've been more agressive while Intel was down (durign the end of the netburst reign) but i guess their ego got in the way.

 

[defiantsf]

A symptom of AMD's problems is that we are discussing mostly about the company and its survival or its upcoming/future products and our hope for them, instead of talking about their actual shipping products. No company will survive, let alone succeed, if that remains true for too long.

 

[coolpurplefan]

Originally posted by: defiantsf
A symptom of AMD's problems is that we are discussing mostly about the company and its survival or its upcoming/future products and our hope for them, instead of talking about their actual shipping products. No company will survive, let alone succeed, if that remains true for too long.

It's not going to remain the same. R600 is lauching today for one. And although people say Barcelona will launch in Q3, some say they're likely to launch before that like this summer.

It would be very strange to see AMD ahead all of a sudden. I know that's unlikely to happen. Oh well, at least today we'll should see some R600 benchmarks.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Special K

Originally posted by: SickBeast
I remember reading some posts by an AMD employee on here about 6 months ago...I directly asked him how he felt about his company's prospects, and he pretty much said that he was very worried.

link?

You expect me to have a thread benchmarked from 6 months ago?

He said it.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: coolpurplefan

Originally posted by: defiantsf
A symptom of AMD's problems is that we are discussing mostly about the company and its survival or its upcoming/future products and our hope for them, instead of talking about their actual shipping products. No company will survive, let alone succeed, if that remains true for too long.

It's not going to remain the same. R600 is lauching today for one. And although people say Barcelona will launch in Q3, some say they're likely to launch before that like this summer.

It would be very strange to see AMD ahead all of a sudden. I know that's unlikely to happen. Oh well, at least today we'll should see some R600 benchmarks.

http://www.cpilive.net/v3/inside.aspx?scr=n&NID=1320

Most data out now points to a Q3 launch of Barcelona and a Q4 launch of desktop K8L/K10 parts.

 

[apoppin]

r600 evidently is not launching today ... still looks to be May 14th
-although the reviewers apparently do have them

the question is will AMD survive to Q4 ?

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: apoppin
r600 evidently is not launching today ... still looks to be May 14th
-although the reviewers apparently do have them

the question is will AMD survive to Q4 ?

They will at least make it to Q3. June is 2 months away, and I'm sure the shareholders will allow them to release Barcelona to see how well it competes. If it tanks (along with R600), I could see them going broke or else being taken over on the cheap by IBM or something (Samsung makes no sense, no offence).

 

[apoppin]

Samsung make no sense ... agreed ... although they certainly *can*

likely AMAT . ... . now 'they' would want to take on intel

IF barcelona is late ... who knows

but i think if AMD got an *extra* Billion$ ... they *could* beat all odds
-or a kickass product plus good marketing [they always could get the product ... their marketing is weak]

 

[rise]

i was hoping viditor would be back and explain how this is financing is a good deal as he implied earlier. nobody else seems to see it that way so i'm intrigued.

 

[ribbon13]

perhaps we should stop recommending cheap intel platforms to people with 'budget non-oc threads' and help AMD out a little?

 

[LouPoir]

Let's hope that AMD/ATI make it. We dont need another Microsoft like monopoly --

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: rise
i was hoping viditor would be back and explain how this is financing is a good deal as he implied earlier. nobody else seems to see it that way so i'm intrigued.

Sorry...I was called away on a huge consulting gig.
To answer your question:
1. A credit rating doesn't look at how good the financing is for a company, it looks at the debt level and the currently available means to repay it.

2. The structure of the Bond offering has 2 possible outcomes...if K10 really is a viable chip, then the financing is brilliant as it gets AMD more than enough leeway for all of their expenses over the next 2 years, but it doesn't dilute the shares at all. If K10 is a dog and doesn't work, then AMD will probably not survive...and to be clear, what matters are the server parts not the desktop parts as this is the lion's share of the profits. However, as even the K8 is faster than C2D in 8 core configs, I'm fairly confident that K10 will be quite successful. It also helps that for the first time in their history, AMD has enough OEM contracts and Fab capacity to move a large amount of product quickly once it starts shipping...

3. The current situation (vis a vis C2D's and Penryn's performance) was quite apparent to AMD before they made the ATI deal, as was the probable need for a bond offering around this time. The fact that they waited until after they knew for sure indicates that this was their best course of action and that they are quite confident of success. It also indicates that they needed to prepare for Nehalem (a chip that they and we have no idea about performance-wise...note that Fusion's release coincides with Nehalem's).

4. If you go back and follow the stock for the period where the offering was first made public (starting April 24th), you'll see that there was a huge uptick in buying on some extremely heavy volume. You should be very careful in following analyst's advice as they tend to make the right call only after the stock has moved (and even then they get it wrong more than half the time)...the more intelligent move is to follow the actual buying signals to help guage interest.

5. Both Intel and AMD have been signaling that the price war won't last beyond this year, so AMD's ability to repay the loan and their stock price should go up significantly from that as well...

At the end of the day, I am now fully invested (as much as I can be) in AMD at an ASP of ~$14...because of some other deals, I didn't quite hit my 50k shares target, but I came close. I don't expect to sell any until early next year, but I won't sell for anything less than 100% profit ($28), but I fully expect to do much better than that over this next year.
If I'm wrong, then I may lose $100k from my portfolio...if I'm right, I should make enough to buy another house next year (in cash).
The last time I felt confident enough to post my trade and target was Fall of 2004 (in the AT News area). AMD was @ ~$11 and I stated (to the loud derision of many Intel fans) that AMD would double it's share price by Dec and that I was buying 30k shares...it hit $23+ on Dec 5th (of course my sell went off at $22.25).

Edit: BTW, there's another joker in the deck (which is why I bought the shares sooner rather than later). I don't know if you have been following the news about Intel losing all of the executive's e-mails in the antitrust case, but this is a very very VERY big deal!
I'll try to find the time to post a seperate thread on this soon (it's quite long and involved), but in the meantime I suggest you read through all of the articles you can.
Study the possible remedies for the action, the damages (including the legal term "but-for" in anti-trust cases), and the term "adverse inference instruction"

 

[apoppin]

AMD has *hope*

IF all goes 'perfectly' for them

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39385

AMD's "tsunami" of products to change competitive picture


A RATHER DOWNBEAT AMD shareholder meeting had Hector Ruiz defending his position as two or three shareholders asked him what the heck is going down.

The first shareholder asked why AMD was behind Intel on process technology and Hector Ruiz pointed out that Chipzilla has a lot more marketing and R&D than his firm.

He said: "It's pretty clear to me the two companies have been quite different from the very beginning. Opteron for three or four years was the standard in performance and there was no product that matched it."

AMD's wafer diameter was still 200mm then and it did very well in spite of the process lead Intel had.

Ruiz said that AMD will introduce 45 nanometre chips in the middle of 2008. He said AMD has acknowledged it could have done things in Q4 and Q1 better.

"We have a tsunami of new products coming down the pipeline over the next 12 months," he said.

The next shareholder asked how things were going down with Dell.

Ruiz said AMD is "thrilled" to have Dell as a customer but is in the earliest stages of the relationship. The future promised more.

Another shareholder said that the conference call AMD did in December painted a very rosy picture, but Intel had been executing much better since.

He wanted to know why AMD is being so quiet about new products it might have.

Ruiz said that nothing AMD said in December had changed. He said AMD did have a lull of activity because the next generation begins with Barcelona in the second half of this year.

The next question was from an investor who asked Ruiz whether there was a media bias that didn't improve AMD's position. He asked how long AMD was going to be quiet and let the media have its way. He asked specifically about an article in Hardware Zone.

Ruiz said the reality is that the competitor had become stronger. He said AMD has been a little bit more vocal recently. He said AMD will do a better job in the future being vocal about its capabilities. But he said it costs money to do that. AMD didn't want Intel to have much of a clue about the next generation of products it had

 

[Arkaign]

/Crystal Ball on

K10 will be ~5% faster than Penryn clock for clock, but won't yield well enough to produce competitive processors to Penryn (3+Ghz, with far superior cache sizes on the 45nm die)

Intel will continue to bleed AMD away on the low end / mass market processors

AMD will hold steady in the backoffice area, while fading from the desktop

IBM will purchase AMD after several further quarterly reports show massive losses, IBM will sell the Graphics division, and rebrand and remarket the Desktop processors, while increasing R&D. Gains against Intel will be slow but steady.

/crystal ball off

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
/Crystal Ball on

That's the real danger of those Palantiri, it sounds as if you've become an unwilling servant of Mordor...

 

[IceRedwing]

lol good one viditor

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: nyker96
What're you takes on this situation?

Nothing to see here, move along.

 

[craftech]

You had better hope it isn't the end for them. Monopolies are never a good thing for the consumer. The current state of afairs in this country should drive that point home loud and clear. And every time you hear of another big merger in the news, instead of shrugging your shoulders you should cringe.

John