14 DAY TRIAL // After the news of a possible acquisition by Silver Lake of a 26% stake in AMD's shares hit the internet a couple of weeks ago, the general press reaction was positive, bringing hope of a possible AMD revival thanks to a much-needed injection of cash from the equity firm. Apparently, in the meantime, the talks bogged down on the price and strategy of the acquisition.
It seems that talks of a much-needed acquisition were going well over the summer, and AMD was bound to have 26% of its shares bought by Silver Lake Management. No price has been set, however, and everybody was wondering how much AMD would manage to sell to Silver Lake in order to get its business back on profit. Speculations flew around like crazy this late summer as AMD has just finished a major internal restructuring separating the graphics department from the CPU one, hoping this way to get better-focused groups in order to provide superior products.
According to sources at Bloomberg, the discussions were finally put on hold after no price or strategy was agreed between Silver Lake and AMD. Since the Silver Lake proposition will probably be refused, AMD is considering other "strategic options." The main effort for AMD lately is to make up the money the company is losing fast in favor of Intel and NVIDIA as well.
AMD urgently needs an infusion of cash to make it on the long run
Apparently, the company tries as well to branch out in building custom chips for various clients, but the losses on the PC market are so severe that it needs a stronger push forward to become competitive again. AMD's main revenues currently come from Microsoft and Sony as they pay the chips being installed in their consoles. The latest Radeon Fury card which was trumpeted as a Titan killer fizzled really fast, and although not being a bad card, it lagged a bit behind its NVIDIA counterpart.
AMD's shares are down 38% this year, the company being affected by deep underground vendor machinations orchestrated by Intel which swings the PC hardware market according to the introduction of its new generation "Skylake" CPU.