Posted 04/27/09 at 11:07:31 AM by Paul Lilly

Following a board meeting last week, VIA has come to the conclusion that it needs to cut capital to NT$5.17 billion ($153.4 million USD), a 60 percent reduction. A shareholder meeting on June 19th will decide when the reduced capital will take place.  As a result of the planned reduction, VIA said it expects shares to improve to $NT11.36, or almost three times as much as the current NT$4.50 share price.

VIA didn't say what effect the reduced capital would have on its Nano processor roadmap, which could put the heat on Intel in coming months. Citing un-named market sources, news and rumor site DigiTimes notes that demand for Intel's Atom netbook CPUs has been slowing down lately in the wake of price cuts by low-end notebooks. The sources also attributed the reduced demand to consumer anticipation of the next generation of Atom processors, currently scheduled for the second half of this year.

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Posted 07/31/08 at 12:23:30 PM by Paul Lilly

Tired of all the drama surrounding the future of Yahoo? You're not the only one. Not a week goes by without a new twist emerging in what's to become of the would-be search giant, and billionaire investor T. Boone Pickens has had enough. Aside from having one of the coolest names ever, Pickens also owned 10 million Yahoo shares, all of which he sold at a loss.

Pickens picked up the stock back in May in anticipation that activist Carl Icahn would wage a proxy contest to force Yahoo's board into signing on the dotted line with Microsoft. Tired of waiting, Pickens unloaded all his shares, but not without taking a parting short at Yahoo management.

"I think that Yahoo management was pathetic," Pickens told the San Francisco Chronicle.

It's unclear exactly how much money Pickens lost in the ordeal, but Yahoo stock was selling around $27 per share in late May and has since dropped to around $20 per share. Talk about a costly way to make a point.

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Posted 07/18/08 at 11:41:52 AM by Paul Lilly

Few companies wouldn't mind switching places with Google, who posted a $1.25 billion profit, but when you're the undisputed champ of the online world (or if you're Dr. Evil), a measly billion dollars just isn't enough. Along with earnings per share of $3.92, the numbers aren't adding up to what analysts had predicted, leaving many to wonder if the online advertising market might be taking a turn for the worse. Google Cheif Economist Hal Varian sees it differently, saying:

"Consumers are being cautious in their online spending patterns just as they are in the offline spending. Despite the weakness in the economy, advertising seems to be hodling up remarkably well in most sectors. This illustrates the point that we've made several times that during periods of slow economic growth, the last thing an advertiser wants to cut is its spending on search-based advertising."

But Varians comments did little to assuage investors, nor did posting gross sales of $5.37 billion, marking a 39 percent improvement over one year ago and hitting analysts' estimates. The company's shares still managed to drop 10 percent to $479.70 in after-hours trading.

Given the overall growth and $12.7 billion in cash, is the panic justified?

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Posted 07/16/08 at 12:05:34 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Although ATI has been the lone source of promising news for it in recent times, AMD is ruing its 2006 acquisition of ATI. The chip manufacturer heavily overpaid for the ATI acquisition and now values the graphics chip maker at only $2.9 billion – it bought ATI for $5.4 billion.

Its announcement that it will take a $948 million charge drove its stock price to a 16-year low of $4.84 on Friday. It will officially report its Q2 loss of 51 cents per share on 17th July. It will be its 7th consecutive quarterly loss. Most analysts paint a dreary picture of AMD’s future but a few like CRT Capital Group’s Ashok Kumar remain sanguine about the company’s prospects. AMD will have to quickly turn a corner if it wants to survive.

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