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AMD to Take Unspecified ATI Charge
Wednesday December 12, 4:46 pm ET
By Jordan Robertson, AP Technology WriterAMD Admits It Overpaid for ATI, Will Take Charge to Reduce Goodwill EstimateSAN JOSE, Calif. -- Advanced Micro DevicesInc. acknowledged Wednesday it overpaid in its $5.6 billion acquisitionof graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc., adding to the deepeningfinancial woes of the slumping semiconductor company.[size=-2]ADVERTISEMENT
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| Sunnyvale-basedAMD, the world's No. 2 maker of microprocessors behind Intel Corp.,said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission it willhave to write down the value of the goodwill estimate it attached toATI when it bought the company in October 2006.
AMD said it does not currently know how big the charge will be.
Goodwillrefers to the value of intangible assets such as a company's reputationor influence within an industry, or even employee morale, all of whichare believed to influence its ability to drive future sales.
AMD'sfinal purchase price for ATI included a $3.2 billion allocation forgoodwill, nearly three times the value of product technology that ATIhad already developed and was working on in its laboratories, accordingto AMD's regulatory filings.
AMD bought ATI to bolster thegraphics capabilities of its chips and add valuable "chipset"technologies to its product lineup. Chipsets are responsible forsending data from the microprocessor to the rest of the computer.
AMD, until that point, focused primarily on microprocessors, which are the brains of computers.
Analystsimmediately questioned the wisdom of the deal, however, expressingworries over AMD's ability to pay down the billions of dollars in debtit incurred to finance the transaction, and whether ATI's technologieswould add enough value to AMD to justify the price.
AMD, whichwas riding high off several years of impressive market-share gains atIntel's expense, suddenly fell on hard times in the summer of 2006 whenIntel struck back with a new product lineup.
AMD's finances werehurt by a fierce price battle and slumping demand for its chips, andits deep losses and gloomy outlook forced the company to go to WallStreet earlier this year to help pay down its oppressive debt.
Thecompany offered up two rounds of convertible senior notes to investors,raising $3.65 billion from the debt offerings in April and August. AMDsaid the proceeds would be used to pay down debt from the ATIacquisition and fund general corporate expenses.
Other questions still linger about the ATI deal.
Onemonth after the deal was completed, AMD and Nvidia Corp. -- ATI's chiefrival in the graphics chip business -- disclosed that they had receivedJustice Department subpoenas in a criminal investigation of possibleantitrust violations in the graphics industry.
Little is knownabout the probe, except that the subpoenas came on the heels of alengthy Justice Department price-fixing probe of memory chip makersthat led to charges against more than a dozen executives and hundredsof millions of dollars in fines.
AMD is still hurting from the competition with Santa Clara-based Intel and the ATI acquisition.
AMDhas lost $1.6 billion through September, though sales continue to pickup. Analysts will be looking for more details about the company'sfinancial outlook when AMD holds its financial analyst day Thursday inNew York.
AMD's stock price has fallen by 54 percent since thestart of the year in a plunge that has wiped out more than $5 billionin shareholder wealth. Shares fell 10 cents to close at $8.97 inWednesday trading.
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LZ转发的这则新闻翻译的实在让人汗,有些地方简直不知所云。:funk:
仔细看上面这则新闻。AMD承认高估了ATi的无形资产价值,所以提交文件声明要降低Ati的资产价值,而且将会是很大的数字,Write-down 不是注销。而是“人为降低帐面价值”的意思。
就目前AMD的市值看,如果维持原先对ATi的价值评估的话,AMD现在相当于整个原有CPU业务蒸发。这个股东铁定不愿意。:funk:
[ 本帖最后由 eye2eye 于 2007-12-12 20:49 编辑 ] |
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