AMD Reports 2014 Fourth Quarter and Annual Results

drescherjm said:
The non transferable x86 license would have to be revisited before anyone could purchase AMD.
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I wonder how that is worded. (Not that I am a legal or contracts expert in any way shape or form, but...)

I mean, anyone can just buy and sell AMD stock. Regular people and traders do this every day. What triggers a termination of the license?

Certainly a company can't buy AMD and transfer the license to the corporate parent, but what if a company boys a majority stake in AMD, continues to have AMD operate on the x86 market on its own, and has it do non-x86 development on behalf of the buying company?

I'd imagine there are interpretations to a contract of this sort which can be challenged by a capable lawyer in either direction.
 
fixedmy7970 said:
AMD isn't going anywhere. Worst thing to happen is AMD gets bought; I'm sure Samsung would like AMD's gpu tech so they don't have to pay Qualcomm for their gpus

And lets not forget Nintendo recently contracted AMD for their latest console, and the last time I checked, the Wii was the number one selling console.

Those game console sales will definitely keep AMD afloat through 2015. And then Keller Time! break it down!
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1) The Wii is a last-gen console, and is only still active in the US; is the last time you checked 2009? ;)
2) The Wii U, while a fun console, is certainly lacking severely in sales, and only the GPU is made by AMD.
3) AMD is basically selling the APUs in the XBone and PS4 at cost, I would hardly call this a victory.
 
brah, AMD is making a margin in the 20% on the console sales. And the Wii U sells very well. Second only to the ps4,

"The last official worldwide numbers put the PS4 at 7 million units (as of March 31), Xbox One at 3 million units (as of December 31, with 5 million shipped as of March 31), and Wii U at 6.17 million units (as of March 31)."

And I have feeling, Nintendo will go with a cpu and gpu solution from AMD.

oh yea!!!!!
 
I really want to support amd, but their cpu's suck.
It's like they threw in the towel for that part.
 
Factum said:
If anyone takes over AMD, they will not get the x86 part, people seem for forget what the lincense says:

http://corporate.findlaw.com/contra...agreement-advanced-micro-devices-inc-and.html

3.2. Intel License to AMD.
Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement,
Intel hereby grants to AMD a non-exclusive, non-transferable ***** worldwide license, without the right to sublicense, under Intel's Patents to: (a) make, use, sell (directly or indirectly), offer to sell, import and otherwise dispose of all AMD Licensed Products; (b) make, have made, use and/or import any equipment and practice any method or process for the manufacture, use and/or sale of AMD Licensed Products; and (c) have made ***** AMD Licensed Products by another manufacturer for supply solely to AMD for use, import, sale, offer for sale or disposition by AMD pursuant to the license granted above in Section 3.2(a). - See more at: http://corporate.findlaw.com/contra...cro-devices-inc-and.html#sthash.a9JRy2Oq.dpuf

The devil is in the details.
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So as i mentioned there is very little definition here as to what "no non-transferrable" means.

Could some other company buy AMD, envelop them and transfer the license across their organization? Definitely not.

But if another company simply buys a controlling stake of AMD, leaves the company operating as an independent organization, and uses the x86 license only for AMD CPU's there is a strong argument that the license is in the hands of AMD, a publicly traded company (of which 50.1% of voting shares just happen to belong to another company) and no transfer has taken place.

Publicly traded companies change hands on a daily basis (or a tually on a second by second basis).

Let's say another company buys a handful of shares. Has there been a transfer? I'd argue no.

How about if they buy 20% of the outstanding shares? I'd still argue no.

Is it suddenly a transfer if another company crosses the 50% line? I don't know.

Are there standard definitions within contract law that help define this? I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea.

I guess a transfer would take place if AMD at any point ceaases to be AMD and another organization instead tries to use the license, which is explicitly prohibited.

But what defines when or if AMD ceases to be AMD?
 
Zarathustra[H];1041375293 said:
So as i mentioned there is very little definition here as to what "no non-transferrable" means.

But what defines when or if AMD ceases to be AMD?
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Under Termination for Cause:

(7) the other party undergoes a Change of Control. For purposes of this Section 6.2(b)(7), "Change of Control" shall mean a transaction or a series of related transactions in which (i) one or more related parties who did not previously own at least a fifty percent (50%) interest in a party to this Agreement obtain at least a fifty percent (50%) interest in such party, and, in the reasonable business judgment of the other party to this Agreement, such change in ownership will have a material effect on the other party's business, or (ii) a party acquires, by merger, acquisition of assets or otherwise, all or any portion of another legal entity such that either the assets or market value of such party after the close of such transaction are greater than one and one third (1 1/3) of the assets or market value of such party prior to such transaction
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If AMD is purchased or merged 50% or more, the agreement can be terminated.
 
fixedmy7970 said:
brah, AMD is making a margin in the 20% on the console sales. And the Wii U sells very well. Second only to the ps4,

"The last official worldwide numbers put the PS4 at 7 million units (as of March 31), Xbox One at 3 million units (as of December 31, with 5 million shipped as of March 31), and Wii U at 6.17 million units (as of March 31)."

And I have feeling, Nintendo will go with a cpu and gpu solution from AMD.

oh yea!!!!!
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Do you have a source for those numbers?
Also, that was in March of last year, I highly doubt the XBone is behind the Wii U in total sales now.

Also, the CPU of the Wii U is developed by IBM, only the GPU is from AMD.
 
pxc said:
"I'm not an economist, but..."

....

While I obviously missed the portion of time "in the past" when "Intel would skyrocket prices" for all but the smallest niche products*, as far back as I can remember actually working in the PC business (@ a custom builder in the late 1980s), Intel has priced mainstream CPUs at around $130, with the low end of current products around $80-$90. .....
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This is the type of thing I remember:

Intel Pentium II 400 MHz specifications

Frequency ? 400 MHz
Bus speed ? 100 MHz
Clock multiplier ? 4
Package Single Edge Contact Cartridge 2
5" x 2.44" x 0.494" (12.7 cm x 6.2 cm x 1.25 cm)
Socket Slot 1 / SC242
Introduction date 15-Apr-98
Price at introduction $824

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Penti... 80523PY400512PE SECC2 (BX80523U400512E).html

Pentium II 350 was $621

Celeron 300A was $149


I just don't ever want to go back to that type of thing.
 
I have gone through AMD's Financial Statement. Overall, they are in health condition.

1. Their net cash flow is positive and current liability is relatively low. That means that there is no urgency to borrow more money.
2. The negative net income is caused by goodwill impairment charge. That just means AMD has over-valued their intangible asset such as market value of their name, AMD.

There is one concern: sales and gross margin have been declining in last couple quarters. AMD is losing market share.
 
pgaster said:
I just don't ever want to go back to that type of thing.
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Did you ever spend $621 for a PII-350 or $824 for a PII-400? $588 for an Athlon XP 3000+? How about $902 for an Athlon X2 4800+? $1031 for an Athlon 64 FX-60? Relatively few suckers ever paid that much. What you probably remember is the much lower price you paid after any of those were out for a few months. I'm pretty sure I paid under $200 for my X2 4800+ back in the day.

Using list prices on release isn't a very good metric. The prices are overinflated and not representative of what most people pay for CPUs. See: ASPs for Intel and AMD for desktop and mobile processors, where Intel's is under $80 excluding Atom and AMD's is under $65, despite having relatively few models with list prices under those amounts.
 
Tendencyman said:
I have gone through AMD's Financial Statement. Overall, they are in health condition.

1. Their net cash flow is positive and current liability is relatively low. That means that there is no urgency to borrow more money.
2. The negative net income is caused by goodwill impairment charge. That just means AMD has over-valued their intangible asset such as market value of their name, AMD.

There is one concern: sales and gross margin have been declining in last couple quarters. AMD is losing market share.
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They're in the condition of a company I don't expect to be around much longer. They have very little cash, quite a lot of debt, they've cut R&D spending to prop up their earnings ("prop up" meaning still taking a loss - just a smaller one), they have no currently competitive products out, etc etc. I think in the past 14 quarters they've only been profitable for 2 or 3 of them.
 
pxc said:
Did you ever spend $621 for a PII-350 or $824 for a PII-400? $588 for an Athlon XP 3000+? How about $902 for an Athlon X2 4800+? $1031 for an Athlon 64 FX-60? Relatively few suckers ever paid that much. What you probably remember is the much lower price you paid after any of those were out for a few months. I'm pretty sure I paid under $200 for my X2 4800+ back in the day.
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Perhaps you got a really good deal, but I remember when the 939 3800+ X2 was released, and it alone being ~$370.
Those CPUs didn't go down that much in price after only a few months, it was after a few years they finally started to become reasonable.

The FX-60 was the only CPU I remember dropping after a few months from $1200 to ~$800 before being discontinued in favor of AM2 CPUs.
The 939 X2 4800+ stayed around $800+ for a very long time, even long after socket AM2 was released.

Prices for technology a decade ago didn't drop nearly as rapidly as they do now.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The worst of this has already happened though. AMD is no longer competetive across really any part of the CPU market, so if they were to disappear tomorrow, it probably wouldn't have much of an impact on CPU pricing.
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Oh I think you might be surprised how expensive Intel CPUs could get if AMD were to disappear. Same for Nvidia cards.

AMD had a real opportunity to upset the CPU market and make it truly long term competitive, but Intel squashed it with sleazy and illegal practices, and were rewarded for that by cementing their CPU market dominance.
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That's pretty much the short and long of it. Like you said, maybe management could be better, but if Intel had simply obeyed the law during the Athlon days, we would be in a different reality now where AMD would likely be far more competitive.
 
Tendencyman said:
I have gone through AMD's Financial Statement. Overall, they are in health condition.

1. Their net cash flow is positive and current liability is relatively low. That means that there is no urgency to borrow more money.
2. The negative net income is caused by goodwill impairment charge. That just means AMD has over-valued their intangible asset such as market value of their name, AMD.

There is one concern: sales and gross margin have been declining in last couple quarters. AMD is losing market share.
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Huh?

1. AMD burned through another net $64 million in cash for the year, inventories are building and being marked down (along with restructuring charges and impairment, contributing to most of the loss last quarter). AMD has $3.5 billion in debt and only paid off $17 million last quarter (instead of the average $350+ million each of the 3 prior quarters), which doesn't seem to even cover interest. Graphics revenues were down 15% and Computing revenues were down 16% in a quarter where CPU unit shipments were up YoY. I'm not sure how anyone could see this as healthy.

2. No, it's not as simple as simple as a name or intangibles. Since ASPs and sales are shrinking quite significantly, the value of the company as a whole is reduced, along with other non-rosy realities. Writing down 6% of the value of the company in one quarter is not a signal of health.

I see many accounting tricks, as usual, and the ugliness could be much worse this quarter than last.
 
Incramus said:
We need AMD in the game, if Intel didn't have any competitors who knows what prices would be....
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That's true to a point, but Intel's main threat is ARM right now, not AMD. They have to keep evolving their technology in order to convince everyone that x86 remains the way to go.
 
Cr4ckm0nk3y said:
Under Termination for Cause:



If AMD is purchased or merged 50% or more, the agreement can be terminated.
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by either party (AMD before or Intel).

my statement in the other thread stands. AMD still holds the IP for the AMD64 whether the contract becomes either:

Terminated (in no part of said contract does it explicitly or implicitly state that ownership is transferred. That would be a sell so no, incorrect) or;

in contention.

The exception would be an addendum is added that clearly state such a condition of transferability due to material breach or other terminable clauses, which I read all of the contract, no such statement is ever declared and that would be one of the most idiotic agreements to agree to by either party (but in this case AMD).

why do you think there did the dance and pony show in courts to settle it out of court with money exchanging hands and law suits. AMD does infact, even with the material breach that was being clamned my INTL, still would have owned the AMD64 IP.
 
holy crap. didn't realize their stock was so low. i remember (many years ago) it was hovering around $20-something
 
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