Even though AMD reported a $1,77 Bil loss inc. charges, the operating loss is much smaller.

It looks like FUdzilla has excellent insight into ATI's people, past, present and perhaps future. It was great to see an interview with Rick Bergman on your site.  He used to work for TI in the past, right?
And his biggest success was RADEON 9700Pro. Also, I hear that he was the only VP, who always satisfied his objectives at all times.
It would be great to get a bit more information on his career highlights and perhaps a few pictures.

The article touches on a very important point - AMD needed to cover the outstanding debt to MS to be able to dispose of assets. Question is: "If AMD had only a few profitable years in its 20-year history and was losing money even when it had better products, how would it survive after it gets rid of its assets?"...   



The Story Behind AMD's new round of financing     
Written by Fudzilla staff   
Friday, 10 August 2007 10:12


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Letter of the week

I've studied the MS term loan (100+ pages, and written in legal/financial gobbly-gook).  I wrote to a few analysts a couple of weeks ago that AMD
would likely be in violation of the term loan at the end of Q3 (clause 7.16), and needed to do another round of financing.  The current balance of
the loan is about $1.6B.  Here is what I wrote those same analysts today.

---------------------------------

Well, looks like I was right on a couple of  counts. AMD was going to be in
violation of their MS term loan at the end of Q3, and thus, needed to get
the financing done soon (optimally, before IDF, and perhaps before Sept.
10th launch of Barcelona) to pay off the MS term loan.
 
In April, rumors were about Barcelona being better than expected, and was
demoed at 2.9Ghz.  They got the $2.2B convertible done, and a month later in Taiwan, Barcelona at <2Ghz was shown.  Last week, we get rumors about Barcelona being at 3+ghz by December, and this week, we get a new round of financing (a new $1.5B convertible).

If AMD was confident about 3Ghz Barcelona in December, it would have made more sense for them to wait until Sept. 10th, put 3Ghz on their official roadmap, and announce the financing then.  Also, if they though initial Barcelona's were going to be good, wouldn't they release independent benchmark results, before doing the new financing?
 
This new round will not be enough for AMD.  But by monetizing their other assets (selling rest of Spansion, selling the Austin office buildings and
leasing them back, and selling 200mm equipment in Fab 30), they should be able to get by for the next 6-9 months; in other words, enough time to fix
Barcelona, which may get them to cash-flow neutral for a short time. Sometime along then, they will need to raise more cash.  I suspect that will
involve equity.
 
-fred

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SUNNYVALE, Calif.
-- August 8, 2007 --Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:
AMD) today announced its intention to offer, subject to market and other
conditions, $1.5 billion aggregate principal amount of convertible senior
notes in a private offering to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to
Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. AMD expects to grant
to the initial purchaser a 30-day option to purchase up to $225 million
aggregate principal amount of additional notes to cover over allotments.

AMD expects to use the net proceeds of the offering, together with available
cash, to repay in full the outstanding balance of the term loan AMD entered
into with Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. in October 2006.  If the
initial purchaser exercises its over-allotment option, AMD expects to use
the additional net proceeds for general corporate purposes, including
working capital and capital expenditures

It is great to see some in-depth financial analysis on your site. "AMD to lose more than expected, 540 to $570 million" - if this prediction is close to actual numbers you will beat all the analists on Wall Street, because noone is projecting this kind of numbers.