"NIce for not knowing much about business. 1billion debt is NOTHING to companies AMD's size, and wouldn't be a blip on a company Intel's size."
That'd be true a couple of years ago, they're now worth around 3 billion (think the figure was 3.85 last time I checked), so, yeah, I'd say it's something. Intel's Core along with AMD's poor timing buying ATi all came together and really ate into AMD's cash reserves over the last couple of years...
yes, thats an incredibly short sighted well publicised and completely incorrect opinion. ATi is actually improving by the day, its latest set of products has completely turned the company around. They were losing market share and value when AMD bought them, they are going the opposite way now. THey would cost significantly more for AMD to buy them today, they bought a company before an incredibly competitive cheap set of products came out and subsequently they've made a decent profit by means of buying a company at a lower point and now its at a higher point.
Also ALL of INTELS and AMD's plans revolve around on die intergrated gpu within 1-2 years, ALL of their chips will support them and therefore AMD HAD to get into the gfx market.
So either they did it now, after ATi's market share has turned from loss, to gain with Nvidia weakening. Or they buy them today, or in a year, for a heck of a lot more cash. Brilliant planning that would be.
Also simply by merging the overal financial power of both companies together is larger. 2 companies worth 1 billion each, banks might give them a 100mil loan, a single 2 billion pound company , they woudl loan them 500mil, as the company is stronger as a whole and the opportunities to make, for instance an incredibly powerful very cheap incredibly low power highly spec'd 780g platform that Intel and AMD have simply nothing to come close to at the moment, again another massive step.
AMD can now provide bulk pricing on whole setups for laptop makers with 780g setups, where as before they couldn't, and an Intel centrino setup was an easier all in one solution.
Everyone seems to think because AMD came up with one significantly better chip that if they can't do that again they'll fold. They've ALWAYS been in massive debt, they've almost always been behind on performance. Thats what happens when you're 1/10th the size and have 1/100th of the R&D budget. Thousands of companies survive worldwide in the same situation.
180million loss still is nothing on a 4billion pound company. Because future earnings from the company are set to be in the 100's of billions, maybe over the next 5, 10 or 50 years. Banks have never been in business for short term gains. Banks LOVE companies in debt paying interest rather than just storing money, it gets banks more money. Banks love AMD, AMD generates their debt holders hundreds of millions of pounds a year while AMD grow and expand, gain market share, increase turnover and will eventually get to a point they pay off lots of their loans.
This is why I laugh at these threads, who exactly is losing by AMD being in loss? their own board are making 1 million a year each instead of 20million each, no one else loses money, banks make money on debt so they love it. The staff are all paid, the jobs created by new fabs make governments money. The competition means all buyers of both AMD and Intel chips get better value for money and even Intel like AMD as firstly, they use half of AMD's patents, and secondly, at the moment they make Intel look better.
