AMD A Ripe Target For Buyout?

SpiceMonkey writes "AMD stock was up 6.74% on Monday on rumors that AMD is a prime buyout target. After their purchase of ATI, they've been pressed to maintain their aggressive policy of chip production increases. As a result, the AMD message board on Yahoo! is full of speculation on who has their eyes on the company. Many folks there think that IBM is the right buyer for the company. There's no firm word that AMD is even being considered for purchase, but it's certainly and interesting prospect."

Comments

don't get exited: it's just about money, not tech

[chriss]

TFA does not talk about a buyout for technology reasons. No, IBM does not want to compete with Intel on the x86 market. This is about a private equity firm (aka a group with a lot of money) possibly trying to buy a large part of AMD. It's all about money, not tech.

Why would they do this? They either believe that AMDs stock is undervalued (it slipped 12% since January due to $574 million forth quarter loss) or they expect the company to fare pretty good in the future. Any way, they'd make money. A third option is always someone believing the single parts of the company are worth more than the stock and breaking it up and selling them separately will be profitable, but AMD is not sufficiently diversified to make this likely.

So what would happen if the rumors were true? Someone else would receive the bonus in the future.

Barcelona will answer this question.

[lavid]

It really depends upon how barcelona performs. It's been a long time since AMD spit out a new architecture and it will be interesting to see if they blew all their creative juices on the A64 arch 3 years ago.

AMD would have to change their "x86 everywhere" rhetoric if they were to be bought out by IBM, that's for sure.

IBM?? NOT!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to be kidding, IBM a prospective buyer? How on earth does that make sense? Why would IBM want to be in the Intel clone business? Do they need the extra fab capacity, no? Is there some IP that they might be after, highly doubtful that there is enough to warrant a purchase vs simply licensing it. AAMOF, I don't see any value that AMD could bring to the company compared to the rather large price they would have to pay to get it. IBM is just fine selling gazillions of PPC based chips to video game manufacturers and doing their other custom IC work.

Re:don't get exited: it's just about money, not te

[Lord Phaeton]

Although in the past private equity firms have generally sought to buy firms with undervalued stocks, with the massive amount of money floating around today pe firms usually buy companies and extract value for themselves by leveraging the company (hence the term leveraged buyout).

In this case, that would be a terrible idea. AMD's debt load is such that a firm would be unable to raise it significantly, but most importantly, AMD competes in a cyclical industry. Many are worried about the recent Freescale LBO because in a highly cyclical industry like semiconductors if the industry turns down and the leveraged firm can't make its debt payments, then it goes belly up.

Considering all of these factors I think that an LBO of AMD is highly unlikely.

Re:When is someone NOT a buyout target?

[FredDC]

Microsoft wants to buy George Bush
 
Impossible! Big oil would never sell him!