LBO Rumour again?
April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. gained as much as 5.5 percent on speculation a private equity company will invest in the second-largest maker of personal-computer processors.
Shares of AMD rose 67 cents, or 4.8 percent, to $14.58 at 1:09 p.m. in New York. They climbed to $14.67 earlier, the highest in more than a month.
``I\'m hearing speculation that Silver Lake Partners is prepared to take a 25 percent equity stake in AMD,\'\' said Marc Weinberger, head trader at W. Quillen Securities in New York.
Silver Lake, based in Menlo Park, California, led the buyout of software company SunGard Data Systems Inc. for $11.4 billion and invested $875 million in disk drive maker Seagate Technology with Texas Pacific Group.
Drew Prairie, a spokesman for Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro, said his company doesn\'t comment on speculation. Elizabeth Hanahan, a Silver Lake spokeswoman, declined to comment.
Advanced Micro has dropped the most among members of the Standard & Poor\'s 500 Index so far this year, losing 32 percent through yesterday. Earlier this month, the shares fell to the lowest since September 2004.
FTN Midwest Securities Corp. analyst JoAnne Feeney upgraded Advanced Micro to ``buy\'\' from ``neutral\'\' today. She expects Advanced Micro\'s earnings to rise next year because of restructuring and less price competition. ``We are seeing the beginnings of a truce between Intel and Advanced Micro,\'\' she wrote.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Kearns in New York at jkearns3@bloomberg.net .
THX@Aktionaer05 @WO
BUGGI |
