AMD CFO Thomas Seifert Resigns

[AtenRa]

http://www.marketwire.com/press-rel...ncial-officer-transition-nyse-amd-1702366.htm

AMD Announces Chief Financial Officer Transition

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - Sep 17, 2012) - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that Thomas Seifert informed the company of his decision to resign as senior vice president and chief financial officer to pursue other opportunities. Devinder Kumar, senior vice president and corporate controller, will serve as interim chief financial officer while a search commences for Mr. Seifert's replacement. Kumar has served as the Company's corporate controller since 2001. Seifert's departure is not based on any disagreement over the company's accounting principles or practices, or financial statement disclosures.

"We thank Thomas for his many contributions to AMD and for serving as interim CEO in 2011," said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. "Thomas' personal commitment to the highest standards of accountability and financial integrity has helped define how AMD does business today. Devinder is an experienced financial executive whose financial expertise and semiconductor experience developed during his 28 year tenure at AMD is an asset to the company."

Mr. Seifert will remain with the company until September 28, 2012 to assist with the transition to the interim CFO.

 

[Maximilian]

I would too.

 

[Idontcare]

Does AMD ever have good news?

 

[Arkadrel]

Honestly though.... its a "Financial Officer".

In my book thats less serious than good engineers leaveing.
You just find a new guy to handle the money, and your no worse off.

While the same isnt true for the engineers that design the chips.
Here that 1 brilliant mind can make a huge differnce.

I think I read shares dropped like 12% from this loss of CFO.
I dont get the market, it seems like its up and down's are based on perceptions that have nothing to do with reality.

Just like Facebook shouldnt be worth silly amounts of money it is,
the loss of a CFO shouldnt drop shares 12% (when in all likelyhood the effects will be very small or non exsistant).

 

[AtenRa]

Does AMD ever have good news?

October the second ends the NDA for Desktop Trinity(at last), ill say that's positive news.

 

[guskline]

This happens with a new CEO.

 

[exar333]

Honestly though.... its a "Financial Officer".

In my book thats less serious than good engineers leaveing.
You just find a new guy to handle the money, and your no worse off.

While the same isnt true for the engineers that design the chips.
Here that 1 brilliant mind can make a huge differnce.

I think I read shares dropped like 12% from this loss of CFO.
I dont get the market, it seems like its up and down's are based on perceptions that have nothing to do with reality.

Just like Facebook shouldnt be worth silly amounts of money it is,
the loss of a CFO shouldnt drop shares 12% (when in all likelyhood the effects will be very small or non exsistant).

I would suggest reading what a CFO does. In many companies they are shaping the strategy as much as the COO (sometimes more) and report directly to the CEO. Someone with 28 years in the business is both going to be extremely knowledgeable and have a lot of connections. The company needs to make money to keep those engineers on payroll.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_financial_officer

 

[meloz]

How come so many people in executive positions are resigning at AMD?

Are they preparing the company for sale? Someone like Apple could buy AMD easily....and get a nice portfolio of IP.

 

[sxegloxx]

A financial Officer who serves as interim of CEO i FAR MORE than a guy who just "handles money." This guy OBVIOUSLY had a large hand in the Strategic Business Planning for the company.

Good thing or bad. don't know

 

[ultimatebob]

When a CFO leaves, it's often followed by a major earnings restatement because you find out that the former finance team was using shady accounting practices. That's why the stock reacted the way it did.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Does AMD ever have good news?

The day JF-AMD left. :biggrin:

 

[Ferzerp]

This happens with a new CEO.

Not unannounced departures...

edit: Has ATF ever considered a "business of computing" forum for stuff like this? It doesn't really fit in the pure technology forums, and it's just going to turn in to an AMD vs Intel thread in 30 or so posts anyway.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

Does AMD ever have good news?

AMD hired Jim Keller away from Apple and John Gustafson away from Intel. So yeah, they do have good news once in a while.

 

[NTMBK]

Does AMD ever have good news?

The Radeon 7000 series have been doing very nicely for themselves. And on the CPU side Jaguar is looking very promising.

 

[KorsKay]

Wonder where all the people that resign defect to and pursue "other opportunities"?

 

[Kenmitch]

How come so many people in executive positions are resigning at AMD?

Are they preparing the company for sale? Someone like Apple could buy AMD easily....and get a nice portfolio of IP.

I read a rumor the other day that possibly Samsung and Qualcomm were interested in AMD....You know how rumors go tho.

 

[happysmiles]

Rory is redesigning AMD and clearly is being quite harsh about it

Although I still believe that their marketing department needs to be replaced. I haven't seen a good AMD ad ever

 

[ShintaiDK]

I read a rumor the other day that possibly Samsung and Qualcomm were interested in AMD....You know how rumors go tho.

To buy what? GPU tech and a huge debt? Economicly AMD is a big hole you throw money into that never comes back.

Also x86 doesnt transfer if someone buys AMD. But even if we for once imagine it happend while unicorns was running around with a pegasus flying above. Its still a black hole and an impossible nightmare to compete with Intel. You could spend the first 10-20billion$ and still be way behind without hope of investment return.

So why would they buy AMD again? They can just buy whatever they would like for pennies from the slowly dying prey.

 

[iCyborg]

To buy what? GPU tech and a huge debt? Economicly AMD is a big hole you throw money into that never comes back.

What huge debt? According to Q2/2012 financials they had 2.02B debt and 1.76B cash on hands. 250M deficit hardly qualifies as huge. And IIRC, they had a small profit in Q2.

 

[Lepton87]

What I'm going to speculate about will never happen but, with the financial resources that Apple has/have they could have used AMD's engineering expertise to design a custom ARM core that would outperform any other arm design on the market by an order of magnitude. Of course it would take many years for that to come to fruition. Competing with Intel in X86 market would be a way tougher, even with all that money in the bank, designing a chip that would outperform Intel chips on a inferior node would take a miracle, unless they also acquired one of the foundry companies and made it the best foundry in the world. Also, something tells me that they are only so many good CPU designers and throwing more and more money on them would have diminishing returns. But it is conceivable that Apple could have better x86 CPUs in their computers than anyone else. The volume of apple computers would be too low for that to be financially sustainable. I wish I would never see such mega apple company, and I won't. Why would then spend the money if they can multiply it?

 

[Regs]

Honestly though.... its a "Financial Officer".

In my book thats less serious than good engineers leaveing.
You just find a new guy to handle the money, and your no worse off.

While the same isnt true for the engineers that design the chips.
Here that 1 brilliant mind can make a huge differnce.

I think I read shares dropped like 12% from this loss of CFO.
I dont get the market, it seems like its up and down's are based on perceptions that have nothing to do with reality.

Just like Facebook shouldnt be worth silly amounts of money it is,
the loss of a CFO shouldnt drop shares 12% (when in all likelyhood the effects will be very small or non exsistant).

CFO has more influence than you think. He runs the gambits of product sales forecasting, budgets, fiscal policy for your "hero" engineers, and has a huge say in what project is fiscally responsible for the bottom line and shareholder. He is in most cases, the CEO's right hand man.

 

[ShintaiDK]

What I'm going to speculate about will never happen but, with the financial resources that Apple has/have they could have used AMD's engineering expertise to design a custom ARM core that would outperform any other arm design on the market by an order of magnitude. Of course it would take many years for that to come to fruition. Competing with Intel in X86 market would be a way tougher, even with all that money in the bank, designing a chip that would outperform Intel chips on a inferior node would take a miracle, unless they also acquired one of the foundry companies and made it the best foundry in the world. Also, something tells me that they are only so many good CPU designers and throwing more and more money on them would have diminishing returns. But it is conceivable that Apple could have better x86 CPUs in their computers than anyone else. The volume of apple computers would be too low for that to be financially sustainable. I wish I would never see such mega apple company, and I won't. Why would then spend the money if they can multiply it?

Apple cant make their own ARM core as such. They license it and adds the other parts. Thats how ARM works. All Apple can do is add other parts.

Not to mention, how many years should Apple wait for the first result of such a buy? 3-4-5 years? Also why buy a company when you can just hire the people.

Also I highly doubt even all Apples money could produce something better than Intels CPUs within 5 years. Not to mention the Apple trend is hanging in a thin thread. They are close to lose the smartphone market and the "trendy design". Then they need the money to survive until the next "Jobs". If there ever gonna be any. Not to mention stock owners want their part of the cash and will force payouts.

Remember the CEO basicly got zero power if the stock owners disagrees,

Plus the little thing about ARM. Its an losing architecture even with all the companies behind. They still havent gotten 64bit and Atoms are about to utterly wipe them. ARM is also a very brutal market, none of the companies need ARM or really care for it. They only use it until something better comes along. They aint locked in like PCs due to legacy SW.

Just look at WinRT. Everyone is going for the x86 version for tablets.

Not to mention this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6203/...soc-emerge-22nm-atom-with-ivy-bridge-graphics

If anything, Apple will ditch ARM.

 

[exar333]

This REALLY depresses me....

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-stock-market-gamestop-shares,17714.html

 

[OCGuy]

The "Abandon ship" mentality just doesn't seem to stop.

 

[2is]

October the second ends the NDA for Desktop Trinity(at last), ill say that's positive news.

That's about as good news as saying tomorrow is Wednesday. Unless it gets favorable news, there's nothing "good" about it. It's just a date right now.