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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Goutam who wrote (80353)	11/17/1999 11:03:00 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579866

Hi Goutama Sai Kantamaneni; I've been delving in the depths of the Edgar files, and have dug out the following choice paragraphs for AMD's convertible debt: FROM THE LATEST 10-K: In 1998, interest expense primarily consisted of interest expense incurred on our Senior Secured Notes sold in August 1996, interest on our Convertible Subordinated Notes sold in May 1998 and interest on our $250 million four-year secured term loan, net of interest capitalized primarily related to the facilitization of Fab 25 and construction of Dresden Fab 30. FROM MAY, 1998 8-K: 5. Redemption. The Securities may be redeemed in whole or from time to ---------- time in part at any time on and after May 15, 2001 at the option of the Company, at the following redemption prices (expressed as a percentage of principal amount) set forth below if redeemed during the 12-month periods commencing on the dates indicated below, in each case (subject to the right of holders of record on a record date to receive interest due on an Interest Payment Date that is on or prior to such Redemption Date) plus any accrued but unpaid interest, if any, to, but excluding, the Redemption Date. The Securities may not be so redeemed prior to May 15, 2001; provided, however, that the Securities will not be redeemable prior to May 15, 2002, unless the last reported sale price of the Common Stock is at least 130% of the then effective Conversion Price for at least 20 Trading Days within a period of 30 consecutive Trading Days ending within 5 Trading Days of the date of the redemption notice. 5 If redeemed during the 12-month period beginning on Redemption Price -------------------- ---------------- May 15, 2001 103.429% May 15, 2002 102.571 May 15, 2003 101.714 May 15, 2004 100.857 ... Holders have the right to convert the principal amount of the Securities into fully paid and nonassessable shares of Common Stock of the Company at the initial conversion price per share of Common Stock of $37.00 (which reflects a conversion rate of approximately 27.0270 shares of Common Stock per $1,000 in principal amount of Securities), or at the adjusted Conversion Price then in effect, if adjustment has been made as provided in the Officers' Certificate, upon surrender of the Security to the Company, together with a fully executed notice in substantially the form attached hereto and, if required by the Officers' Certificate, an amount equal to accrued interest payable on such Security. Looks to me that the street (and AMD) has a certain amount of interest in running the convertibles. The conversion requirement would be 30 days of trading above: $37 * 1.03429 * 1.30 = $49.75 Too bad this can't happen until May, 2001, but if it happens then, it will reduce the amount of debt that the company holds by $450MM. Investors might consider the convertible as a holding, rather than the stock. -- Carl

To: Goutam who wrote (80353)	11/18/1999 9:40:00 PM
From: Scot	Respond to of 1579866

Goutama, Cool. Now, the existence of air cooled, accessible 900MHz Athlon would be hard to dispute for anyone :o) Here's a little more from Comdex (and check out the quote!): maximumpc.com AMD Shows Off 900 Eat your heart out Intel. Rival AMD showed off a 900MHz Athlon built with .18 micron technology at Fall Comdex. AMD made the show of force in private press and analyst meetings. The 900MHz was fabricated at AMD's Texas plant and used aluminum interconnect technology. AMD already holds the speed crown with its 750MHz Athlon CPU that it plans to ship in volume by Christmas. Company officials said a bump in K6-2 technology was in the works. The 900MHz isn't expected to be released to consumers until next year but AMD officials said a 1GHz version using Kryotech's super cooling technology would be available for Christmas. AMD clearly wants to demonstrate that it still holds the performance edge over Intel. Intel's fastest processor to date is a 733EB MHz "Coppermine" using .18-micron technology. Next year, the company will roll out faster Athlon processors with large on-die L2 aimed at the server and workstation market. maximumpc.com Motherboards Galore While some have described Fall Comdex as un-PC, the computer show proved to be a boon for motherboard makers who showed off dozens of new designs including several Athlon boards. Tyan showed off prototypes of its Dolphins 2 board that supports the Slot A Athlon. The Dolphins 2 uses VIA's upcoming KX133 chipset which features 4X AGP, ATA-66 and PC133 memory. Aopen will have a good day if it doesn't use its AK. AK72 that is. Aopen's AK72 board also uses the KX133 chipset and will have four PCI, two ISA and 3 DIMM slots. Soyo will stick with AMD's 750 chipset on its K7AIA Athlon board and is checking out the KX133 chipset for a future board. Most motherboard makers said they expect to ship in volume by January of 2000. Why did most wait so long before introducing Athlon boards? Several motherboard makers told Maximum PC the reason was because AMD's original specification called for six-layer construction which adds about $40 to the cost of manufacturing. VIA chipsets were also fashionable in the Intel camp. Almost every manufacturer offered boards based on the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset which features 4X AGP, ATA-66 and PC133. AOPEN will feature the Apollo Pro 133A in its AX64 Pro. Soyo will stuff the Pro 133A into its Slot 1 6VCA board and will also offer the chipset in a Socket 370 board dubbed the 7VCA. Tyan took a unique take on a new Apollo Pro 133A board called the Tiger 133 which supports dual Pentium III. The dual board is expected to sell for about $110. Tyan also updated its Thunder-series of dual proc boards with memory configurations to make al happy. Tyan's Thunder 1800 supports dual Slot 1 CPUs using Intel's 820 chipset. Opting out of the Rambus situation, Tyan outfitted the 1800 with four DIMM slots and support for up to 1GB of SDRAM using a memory translator hub. The Thunder 2000 uses Intel's hot 840 chipset and sports four RIMM slots and dual Rambus channels for up to 3.2GB per second bandwidth. For those want the 840 chipset but don't want the expensive of Direct RDRAM, the Thunder 2400 uses a translator hub to support up four PC100 SDRAM DIMMs. Tyan's went overboard with its Thunder 2500 which ditches the 840 chipset in favor of RCC's Champion III. The Thunder 2500 supports up to 4GB of SDRAM and sports a full array of 64-bit PCI slots and AGP Pro 50. All Thunder boards come with SCSI audio and 10/100 Ethernet on board