AMD to spin off testing and assembly operations into joint venture

[Scorpus]

AMD has announced today that it will be spinning off its back-end assembly and testing operations into a joint venture with Nantong Fujitsu Microelectronics (NFME), netting the company $371 million.

The joint venture will be 85% owned by NFME, with the remaining 15% retained by AMD. All of AMD's assembly, test, mark and pack operations will be spun out into this joint venture, along with two production sites – in Pengang, Malaysia, and Suzhou, China – and 1,700 employees.

The good news here is that there will be no workforce reductions in the set-up of this joint venture, ensuring all AMD staff working in back-end testing and assembly will remain employed. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2016, so long as the usual approvals are secured.

This move sends more of AMD's chip production facilities away from the company, following the sale of chip fabrication facilities to GlobalFoundries in 2009. While AMD does gain some cash as part of the deal, it will have to deal with this new joint venture in the testing and assembly process of chip production moving forward.

AMD also announced Q3 2015 revenue of $1.06 billion today, which is a 26% decrease on the same quarter last year. This led to the company posting operating and net losses of $158 and $197 million respectively, including a $65 million write-down of older-generation APU inventory. Revenues are expected to decrease further in Q4, according to AMD.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/62448-amd-spin-off-testing-assembly-operations-joint-venture.html

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

AMD have been posting losses in millions every year since their acquisition of ATI back in 2007 I think it was yet they remain in business, I don't understand it.

 

[lripplinger]

AMD have been posting losses in millions every year since their acquisition of ATI back in 2007 I think it was yet they remain in business, I don't understand it.

I agree. Ever since they bought ATI, they have gone down the tubes. They way overpaid for ATI. I don't understand how AMD has stayed around either. How can a company with the continued losses and debt stay alive. They keep shedding more and more of the operation. You can only cut so much, and then before you know it, there is nothing left.

 

[Evernessince]

AMD have been posting losses in millions every year since their acquisition of ATI back in 2007 I think it was yet they remain in business, I don't understand it.

I agree. Ever since they bought ATI, they have gone down the tubes. They way overpaid for ATI. I don't understand how AMD has stayed around either. How can a company with the continued losses and debt stay alive. They keep shedding more and more of the operation. You can only cut so much, and then before you know it, there is nothing left.

Their debt has never really been that deep. Each time the company started a downturn investors would put pressure on the board to fire the CEO before anything more happened. Unfortunately, because of them, AMD has tried to go is so many different directions thanks to all the different CEOs that it ended up doing nothing.

As AMD is right now, it poses zero threat to Intel and Nvidia. Even if AMD did come out with a better GPU or CPU, either intel or Nvidia could easily manipulate the market (or in Nvidia's case, the games) so that any temporary advantage is snuffed out long enough to get their **** together.

AMD's zen processors could beat the latest i7 by miles and it wouldn't mean squat because intel controls the OEMs and it controls it's own fabs. AMD has a long history of having production volume issues with fabs because to them it just isn't an important enough customer.