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Got to that .15 I wanted! Now let's turn on the afterburners.
C'mon and touch .15 you lazy dog!
I'd like to see the chart touch .15 again to keep that triangle healthy.
Spansion to seek debt-for-equity swap to ease financial pressure, says executive
Latest news
Josephine Lien, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Monday 17 August 2009]
Spansion's financial restructuring following its exit from Chapter 11 will involve a debt-for-equity swap, according to John Nation, director of corporate marketing for the NOR flash chipmaker, during his recent visit to Taiwan. Spansion intends to turn its focus to the embedded solutions market and intellectual property licensing, after succeeding in emerging from bankruptcy in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Spansion has been in talks with its creditors, and has worked out plans to ease its financial burden, said Nation. The company has reached certain agreements on debt-for-equity exchanges.
Spansion will move to focus on improving profitability and financial health, rather than revenue growth and market share expansion, Nation noted. The company is looking to maintain its annual revenues of US$1 billion, and ensure positive cash flow.
Spansion recently announced its cash position rose to US$220 million at the end of the quarter ended June 28, 2009, compared to US$95 million in the prior quarter.
In addition, Nation was quoted by the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) as saying that Spansion's memorandum of understanding (MOU) inked in October 2008 with chip packaging and testing house Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) is now invalid due to its insolvency proceedings. Under the MOU, Spansion and ASE agreed to establish a joint venture to co-own Spansion's packaging and testing facility in Suzhou (China).
ASE spokesperson Freddie Liu has confirmed the news, without elaborating further.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090814PD222.html
Report: Elpida to buy Spansion's wireless unit?
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219200423
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The rumor mill is running wild at the Flash Memory Summit here.
The latest rumor: Japan's Elpida Memory Inc. is looking to buy Spansion Inc.'s wireless chip unit for $200-to-$300 million. A spokeswoman from Elpida declined to comment. Spansion did not respond to e-mails.
There are also rumors that Spansion is ceasing development of its green memory technology, dubbed EcoRAM. One customer for EcoRAM, Virident, believes Spansion will continue to develop the technology.
Spansion recently provided an update on its ongoing restructuring efforts that are aimed for the company to emerge from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the fourth quarter of this year.
In April, Spansion said it planned to pursue strategic alternatives for its wireless chip business. At the time, the company said it planned to continue to support its wireless customers. It did not elaborate, but some believe that the company was looking to sell the unit.
Recently, Spansion said it is not selling the entire wireless unit. However, that unit may have found a buyer in Elpida.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219200456&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_semiRSS
EE Times: Semi News
Spansion tips NAND, but is EcoRAM dead?
Mark LaPedus
EE Times
(08/12/2009 5:27 PM EDT)
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Spansion Inc. is entering the NAND market, tipping a technology based on its charge-trap flash scheme.
At the Flash Memory Summit here, the memory maker talked about so-called 'MirrorBit NAND,' based on charge-trap technology.
Spansion sells NOR devices based on charge-trap, dubbed MirrorBit. It also markets something called Ornand, which is a NOR device with a NAND interface.
Spansion appears to be migrating the technology to NAND. With charged-trap, the company can scale devices down to the 1x-nm node, said Ali Pourkeramati, chief technology officer at Spansion, at the event.
The technology is also based on Sonos (silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon). It makes use of silicon nitride instead of polysilicon for the charge storage material. The company is moving MirrorBit NAND from the lab to the fab, he said.
Spansion is moving towards NAND, but there are also rumors that it is ceasing development of its green memory technology, dubbed EcoRAM. One customer for EcoRAM, Virident, believes Spansion will continue to develop the technology. E-mails to Spansion were not returned.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090812PD220.html
Spansion executive to pay visit to Taiwan
Latest news
Advertisement
Josephine Lien, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Wednesday 12 August 2009]
John Nation, director of corporate marketing for Spansion, plans to pay a visit to Taiwan this week, raising speculation that the NOR flash chipmaker is looking to aggressively take back the orders that were shifted to Macronix International Company (MXIC) and Winbond Electronics while being in bankruptcy proceedings.
Spansion, which took a financial hit in fourth-quarter 2008, filed to open insolvency proceedings on March 2. The leading NOR memory maker recently said its exit from Chapter 11 protection is expected to take place in the fourth quarter of 2009.
In response to Spansion's possible moves, Macronix has commented that it remains difficult to challenge the US vendor's market dominance, as Macronix only has 4% of the NOR flash market, much lower than Spansion's 40%.
Macronix and Winbond have reportedly received some orders shifted from Spansion's clients.
Not that weird, but not bad either, esp. with this low volume. We needed a bit more of a drop for a good fib retrace. Depending on whether you use the 22nd or the 28th as a start, it may even need to touch .118 or so - I'm no expert - before it rebounds. Of course, all that is out the window with news. btw, .105 is still a possibility.
.24 looks like the next big resistance. If you want to see a sweet chart, aside from the daily, check out the 2 year weekly. Still resistance on the way in the mid .30's and .70's but $1, $2 and $3 don't seem that far away. Go SPSN(Q)!
I'm liking the daily chart. That was decent resistance at .13 and we broke through and are holding...banging on the .15 roof now.
Way to hold Titan, you must have gotten in good'n early. I'm finding it easier to hold because I'm still holding my breath - I'm underwater until we get to .20. As you said, it won't be long now before I can take a nice deep breath of profit air!
I don't expect a big push for a while, but we've had around 13 or 14 million in volume over the last few days and we've maintained this slightly higher level. I'll take that as a nice first step on the stairway to better things to come!
I would've liked to see it touch .125 - that would be a nice retrace and good level to bounce off of for next week.
Wow, I take a day off from watching and Spansion has an nr and pops with 4 million served! I'll try not to look until the end of the week and at this rate it should be .20 by Friday. Woohoo!
Thanks utmost. I'm having a hard time tracking down who owns that 25% insiders - looking at the numbers no insiders seem to hold that many shares. I'm liking the sp today regardless!
Move that decimal over 1 space to the right, that's what I'm after!
Just making a little joke about the buying and selling this morning - older reference lost on younger audiences! lol
You know the buyers and the sellers are no different fellas!
I like this bit:
“Fresh Start Accounting”
effective 12/31/2009
No additional asset write-downs (Q4 ’08 Impairment)
All debt rolled to equity; No new debt
Intercompany balances washed out
http://www.theedgemalaysia.com/component/content/article/129015.html
Spansion Penang to close plant at month-end PDF Print E-mail
Tags: Advanced Micro Devices | Fujitsu Ltd | Spansion (Penang) Sdn Bhd | Spansion Inc | VSS
Friday, 17 July 2009 13:40
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GEORGE TOWN: Spansion (Penang) Sdn Bhd which announced a voluntary separation scheme (VSS) for more than 700 of its 1,300 workers in February, will cease production by the end of this month.
The workers are being let off in stages, and by the end of July, its test plant will be closed. The assembly plant ceased production at the end of last month.
Sources told The Edge Financial Daily yesterday that while workers at the logistics unit would be the last to be dismissed on Sept 30, about 100 employees from the corporate services section would be retained.
All the machinery from the plants are being shipped in stages to the Spansion plant in Bangkok.
In February, US-based flash memory maker Spansion Inc, Spansion Penang’s parent company, announced that it would slash its workforce by 35% or about 3,000 workers from its facilities around the globe. More than half of the total would come from its Penang plant.
By Feb 23, Spansion Inc had completed shedding a third of its global workforce. It had said then that the decision to axe jobs was unavoidable due to the global recession.
Sunnyvale, California-based Spansion began as a joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Fujitsu Ltd in 1993. Its flash memory products are integrated into a variety of electronic devices such as cell phones, high-definition TVs and set-top boxes.
Under its VSS, employees who have served two years or less were offered 10 days’ pay and a month’s salary in lieu of notice, while those who have clocked five years or more were offered 20 days’ pay and two months’ salary in lieu of notice. The offer for employees in between the two categories was 15 days’ pay and 1.5 months’ salary.
This article appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, July 17, 2009.
Here's one take on the ceo circus
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2009/06/29/spansion-names-fourth-cfo-in-less-than-five-months/
Spansion names fourth CFO in less than five months
Posted by Jack Davis on June 29th, 2009 at 6:06 pm | Categorized as Docu-Drama, Hirings, Spansion | Tagged as Bankruptcy, Executive Pay, John Kispert, Option backdating, RAndy Furr, Sanmina-SCI, Spansion
spansion-logoSpansion, the bankrupt Sunnyvale flash memory maker that gave its executives a retention-based pay raise in February the same day it fired 3,000 workers, named its fourth chief financial officer in less than five months.
Randy Furr was named to replace Nathan Sarkisian, who served as interim CFO since May 20 when he replaced the previous interim chief financial officer, Thora Thoroddsen. Thoroddsen is a senior vice president with the crisis management consulting firm Spansion hired days before it filed for bankruptcy protection Feb. 28. She became Spansion’s interim CFO in April when the company’s previous full-time CFO and a recipient of the retention-based pay raise, Dario Sacomani, quit.
Furr is the former chief operating officer of Sanmina-SCI who left that company unexpectedly in October 2005 “for personal and family reasons.” He resurfaced seven months later as chief financial officer of Adobe Systems, but resigned that post about a month after a special committee of Sanmina-SCI’s board announced that it would have to restate past financial statements as a result of “improper stock option grants.”
Furr agreed to repay $126,480 to cover the increased strike price of mispriced Sanmina options he previously exercised and to forfeit his right to a severance payment from Sanmina-SCI as part of a deal approved May 1 to settle a shareholder lawsuit over backdating allegations.
Furr’s offer letter guarantees him an annual salary of $440,000 and an annual target bonus of between 70-100 percent of that, subject to the approval of the Bankruptcy court, according to a filing today.
He will report to Chief Executive John Kispert, who’s original contract when he was hired in February called for him to receive a $1.75 million bonus should the company be sold. Since then the board has decided to pursue a “standalone” strategy and the bonus will now also be paid when its reorganization plan is approved.
Share quantities are quite small, regardless. But I like that kind of thinking.
Tomorrow's meeting may bring some news/progress. Get your magnifying glass out and look for clues tomorrow.
AMD goes for Intel's Jugular
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/148244,amd-goes-for-intels-jugular.aspx
By The Inquirer
Jun 22, 2009
Things are looking up for the little chipmaker that could.
We've heard whisperings of late to the effect that AMD's sales with the world's largest motherboard maker, Asus, have been skyrocketing, specifically, in the EMEA channel where AMD now accounts for almost 30 per cent of Asus' business.
This is in fairly stark contrast to littler chipper's position 18 months back when AMD was still reeling from the blows dealt by the power of Conroe. Some sources put the change down to John Byrne, who took over as Global Head of Sales for AMD back in December 2008.
Byrne, a competitive Glaswegian, has apparently been pushing his team to turn up the heat ahead of Intel's upcoming Core i5 launch. Unconfirmed reports are that slower parts, like the 7000 series Athlon X2 products will be canned beginning in Q3 (approx 10 days away) in favour of the higher-powered 500 series Athlon X2 parts, built using newer processes, technologies and cache sizes.
For comparison, Athlon 7000-series parts like the 7750 run at 2.7GHz and have a 3MB cache on 95w, whereas the Phenom II X2 545 is clocked at 3GHz with 6MB cache and runs at 80wtdp. So tipping up with a 300MHz speed advantage and double the cache, as well as being built on 45nm SOI, will significantly raise the bar that Intel has to hit with its new line up.
Also, if AMD were to simply stop making the 7000 series overnight, and the market moves to AMD's new higher-powered 5xx series, then Intel PR will certainly have its work cut out for it.
Back in December 2008 when Byrne took control of AMD's leaky ship, the firm had about 30 processors squeezed into the under $US190 space, while Intel managed to span the breadth of the market from $US30 to $US1000 with only about 15 chips.
Byrne appears to have worked tirelessly to reduce AMD's focus on SKUs, instead shifting focus and attempting to create a limited number of 'pressure points' in the chip market competition.
Meanwhile Intel is ramping up the number of SKUs being forced into that space with Core i3 and Core i5 offerings in a twisted role reversal. It would appear that, as AMD makes its roadmap simpler to understand, Intel is doing the exact opposite and sowing confusion, giving its rival significant channel traction.
The worst case scenario for Intel would be that it could end up launching ever more SKUs into the market with ever smaller sales per SKU.
Whether this will be the case or not remains to be seen, but what is already abundantly clear is the about-turn Byrne appears to have pulled out of his magic hat by kicking AMD's sales performance up a notch or two.
theinquirer.net (c) 2009 Incisive Media
Graphic card shortage, AMD can't keep up, not sure if this helps Spansion's demand.
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18876
Flash Memory Summit 2009 to Explore the New Storage Frontier
"Flash Memory Summit will include industry leaders such as Intel, IBM, SanDisk, Micron, Numonyx, Seagate, Samsung, Spansion, SMART Modular, Xiotech, Datalight, STEC, Lexar, Hitachi, ARM, and many others, as well as startups such as Fusion-IO. Important customers such as Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp, and Sun will also participate."
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/flash-memory-summit-2009-to-explore-the-new-storage-frontier,866312.shtml
AMD seems to be heading back up, maybe SPSN will take the hint
lol, Spansion needs a little fiber too! Very low volume today - I prescribe bulk and ruffage!
Macronix seeking partnership for 12-inch fab
DIGITIMES WiMAX portal
Josephine Lien, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Friday 12 June 2009]
Taiwan's Macronix International, a mask ROM and NOR flash chipmaker, is looking to forge a partnership with a foundry to help complete its 12-inch fab plan, according to company chairman Miin Wu.
Macronix originally planned to construct its own 12-inch wafer fab starting in the second half of 2009, while recognizing customer needs over the next 3-5 years. However, Macronix now favors the alternative of building a foundry via some form of partnership to complete the 300mm facility that will initially output 10,000-20,000 wafers per month, said Wu.
Macronix has resumed its 12-inch fab plan in preparation of an expected recovery in end-market demand, Wu indicated, adding that investment amid difficult times will help the company's growth as long as demand picks up.
In addition, Wu confirmed that Spansion's insolvency filing has allowed Macronix to add new NOR flash customers and the company has seen a substantial contribution from the orders. Macronix's revenue and gross margin performance in the second quarter is likely to outperform its guidance, according to Wu. Macronix posted on-year revenue growth for the fourth straight month in May 2009.
Wu has voiced a cautiously optimistic outlook for the third quarter, as Macronix' order visibility has only extended to July.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090611PD233.html
The NOR Flash Market is Headed for Big Changes
June 10, 2009
http://www.glgroup.com/News/The-NOR-Flash-Market-is-Headed-for-Big-Changes-40300.html
Implications
With Spansion moving away from their Wireless business they will have to grow by taking share from other embedded companies like SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc), Winbond, Macronix, ISSI, and others. This will also impact long-time rival Numonyx, the merger of Intel's and STmicroelectronics' NOR flash businesses, and even Samsung.
Analysis
SST's new president, Bertrand Cambou, knows where all the NOR flash bones are buried. As Spansion's former president, he will bring to SST a knowledge of Spansion's strengths and abilities in SST's main market - low-density devices. Nonetheless, SST uses a more costly manufacturing technology than does Spansion, giving Spansion the ability to wrest market share from SST and others by undercutting their prices.
Objective Analysis believes that the NOR market will fade from cell phones and will shrink considerably as a result. This will drive the leading vendors to invade the market niches served by smaller vendors in a market share battle that will drive a number of smaller companies out of the NOR flash business.
Objective Analysis studies the NOR flash market in depth, along with other flash markets. A report on NOR can be found at www.Objective-Analysis.com/Reports.html. This study, "Flash Packaging: What Phone Makers Want and Why" mainly focuses on NOR multichip packages sold into the cell phone market, also investigates other NOR markets and explains their market dynamics.
2 articles: Sandisk deal
Flash memory patent litigation impacts bottom lines
June 9, 2009
http://www.glgroup.com/News/Flash-memory-patent-litigation-impacts-bottom-lines-40263.html
Implications
The recent cross-license agreement with Samsung, noted in the article of interest, includes four-bit-per cell technology, which is a critical element for building enterprise servers using high density solid state disk drives and will keep SanDisk profitable over the next 7 years.
Analysis
SanDisk has reaped the fruits again of its pioneering in the field of NAND flash memory. This company has benefitted from remaining a fabless entity. The lack of a billion dollar price tag of a maintaining a fab operation has enabled them to create a highly talented legal team focused on protecting their critical IP and a product development team focused on innovative designs and new and advanced consumer applications.
The recent cross-license agreement with Samsung, noted in the article of interest, included four-bit-per cell technology, which is a critical element for building enterprise servers using high density solid state disk drives. Samsung has reportedly paid SanDisk ~450 million dollars annually for patent royalties, which have likely kept SanDisk in a stronger cash position than many of its rivals such as Micron, Hynix, STEC and Elpida.
Spansion is looking to defend itself from Samsung patent infringement as well in a new lawsuit. This company is seeking the exclusion from the US market of more than 100 million MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras, and other consumer electronic devices containing Samsung's flash memory components, which the company claims violate 10 of its patents for floating gate technology. Also, the case in the US District Court in Delaware is focused on an injunction and treble damages for the alleged infringement relating to Samsung flash memory, which Spansion estimates has generated ~$30 billion in Samsung's global revenues since 2003.
Spansion is one of the leaders whom developed charge-trap flash as a replacement to the conventional floating gate in flash devices. However, Freescale recently announced they would be going into production for NOR flash products using an alternative nanocrystal-based gate design, as one of the first to do so commercially. It will be interesting to see how this plays out across the industry in patent litigation, as Samsung, Micron, Spansion and SanDisk have all explored this technology, which could be used for NAND flash as well.
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
Contributed by a Member of the GLG Technology, Media & Telecom Councils
http://www.picturebusinessmag.com/article/samsung-electronics-co-sandisk-corp-after-lengthy-negotiations-recently-agreed-patent-licensing-deal-heads-off-threat-litigation-between-two-major-players-market-chips-known-flash-memory-408181_1.html
Samsung, SanDisk Settle
Picture Business Staff
Samsung Electronics Co. and SanDisk Corp., after lengthy negotiations, recently agreed to a patent licensing deal that heads off the threat of litigation between two major players in the market for chips known as flash memory.
The deal extends an existing licensing pact between the companies and provides Samsung rights to key SanDisk patents on what could be an important advance in flash-chip technology. Samsung targeted SanDisk last year for an unsolicited takeover bid that it later dropped.
Financial details of the pact weren't disclosed. But the companies said fixed payments and royalty rates are expected to be about half those of recent years under their current agreement, which expires Aug. 14.
Analysts estimate that South Korea's Samsung has been paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to SanDisk in patent royalties, though the amounts have gone down lately as fierce competition has caused flash-memory prices to plunge. Edwin Mok, an analyst at Needham & Co., puts Samsung's payments at about $350 million in 2008 and $250 million this year; based on the companies' remarks, he estimates that Samsung would pay SanDisk around $125 million a year starting in 2010.
Though SanDisk will receive less money, the deal eased fears the two companies would sue each other, said Daniel Amir, an analyst at Lazard Capital. Avi Cohen, an analyst with Avian Securities, added that some investors also were concerned that Samsung had been independently developing flash-memory technology that could compete with SanDisk's inventions. As a result of the new deal, two companies that had been seen as antagonists will act like partners, he said.
Eli Harari, SanDisk's chief executive, told shareholders at the company's annual meeting recently that the negotiations took two years and were "very, very intense." He added, however, that he came to forge a friendship Oh-Hyun Kwon, president of Samsung's semiconductor business, and predicted the deal will lead to "a much healthier relationship between our two companies."
Spansion, Samsung to Resume Patent Feud
By PATRICK FITZGERALD
Spansion Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. are set to resume their legal dispute after a bankruptcy judge rejected a $70 million patent settlement between the two companies.
Spansion is resuming litigation against Samsung over what it says are Samsung's violations of its patents covering technologies used in flash memory, a type of chip that is a mainstay in portable devices such as music players, digital cameras and computers, according to court papers.
Samsung, in papers filed Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., asked Judge Kevin J. Carey to lift the Bankruptcy Code's automatic-stay provision blocking lawsuits against companies in Chapter 11, so it can pursue its counterclaims against Spansion.
Judge Carey last week rejected a $70 million settlement between the two companies, ruling it was unfair to Spansion's estate and its creditors. The judge said he couldn't conclude that the cash from settlement represented a better deal for the chip maker than pursuing a pair of lawsuits against Samsung.
A Samsung spokesman declined to comment on the resumption of the litigation. A Spansion spokeswoman said she couldn't immediately comment on the issue.
Spansion sued Samsung in federal court in Delaware and filed a separate complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission last November seeking to block U.S. imports of more than one million products, including iPods and BlackBerrys.
In January, Samsung sued Spansion's Japanese subsidiary for infringing on its intellectual property. The company also countersued Spansion in Delaware, alleging patent infringement.
Under the proposed settlement reached in April, Samsung agreed to pay Spansion $70 million and promised "not to assert" any patents owned by its semiconductor division. In return, Spansion granted Samsung a worldwide right to all its existing and future patents - fully paid up and royalty-free - and promised it wouldn't sue Samsung. The lawsuits would be dismissed.
A group of Spansion's floating-rate note holders opposed the deal, claiming it was too one-sided in Samsung's favor and that the change-in-control provision jeopardized the company's chances to find a strategic investor or buyer.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124457720986899157.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I'd sure like 2 million shares at .20 (my average) to be worried about compared to my paltry holdings!
I appreciate your feedback utmost. It forced me to reread the Doc's post. He's charged up alright, but he has done his homework.
Spansion may well be maneuvering to get the most out of the reorganization. I think Doc Mathers is naive to think that what the company appears to do and what it actually does are the same thing.
I am disturbed by the lack of shares being held by the executive - that sucks. Management would be much more convincing if they had a stake in the sp recovery. Let's see where this goes.
OK, so I just read docket #602. Boy, if #573 was sexy, #602 is the opposite of sexy and very troubling. utmost and Cowboy, I'd love to hear your perspective because I feel like I've been slapped in the face.
Is it me, or is sexy docket #573 gone?
Oldy but a goody. This suggests Spansion knew full well that they were compromising when they went ahead with the Samsung deal. Maybe it was all part of the plan?
http://www.solid-state.com/display_article/345891/5/none/none/TCHNE/Analysis:-What%27s-at-stake-with-Spansion/Samsung-flash-memory-litigatio
Analysis: What's at stake with Spansion/Samsung flash memory litigation
Date: November, 2008
Nov. 18, 2008 - Is the new litigation from Spansion (and unit Saifun Semiconductor) against Korean chip/electronics giant Samsung a move of desperation? Or is it a savvy IP strategy that could rock the industry and set an example? Objective Analysis' Jim Handy explains what's going on and what's likely to come about.
A quick recap: Spansion, on behalf of its recently acquired unit Saifun Semiconductor, has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) against Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics, seeking to block imports of allegedly infringing devices to the tune of one million MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras, and other consumer electronic devices. Per ITC rules, Spansion is also naming downstream manufacturers in the Samsung product chain, essentially a who's who of electronics OEMs: Apple, Lenovo, RIM, and Sony; plus Asus, Kingston, and Samsung's other consumer electronics units, plus other third-party manufacturers. A simultaneous filing in US District Court in Delaware seeks an injunction and treble damages for flash memory patent violations.
The stakes, according to Spansion, are tremendous. In a PR, the firm calls the lawsuit "one of the largest patent infringement claims ever filed" -- the technology at issue is "fundamental to floating gate technology, which is the foundation for approximately 90% of the flash memory market," and the Delaware action cites Samsung's flash memory sales as exceeding $30B since 2003. And Boaz Eitan, EVP of Spansion and CEO of Saifun Semiconductor, went even further, stating that Samsung's alleged misuse of proprietary flash memory technology no less than "threatens the foundation of technology innovation."
Article in The Statesman:
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/technology/06/08/0608plugged.html
PLUGGED IN
Spansion finds bankruptcy helps focus its plans
Company's fabrication plant here 'very important,' exec says
By Kirk Ladendorf
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, June 08, 2009
As President Barack Obama said recently about a couple of car companies, a bankruptcy filing can be a new beginning.
That's how Spansion Inc. describes its Chapter 11 filing on Feb. 28.
Unlike General Motors Corp., the chipmaker won't be looking for a handout from the U.S. government. But it will be looking for the bankruptcy court to approve its plans to reorganize its business and, probably, dump some problematic assets, including one or more of its Japanese chip factories.
All of this might be fairly good news for the company's Austin operations, which employ about 1,000 people.
Spansion executives are sending strong signals that Fab 25, its workhorse 14-year-old chip factory in Southeast Austin, will play an important role in its new postbankruptcy game plan as a downsized company with about $1 billion in annual revenue, which is less than half of what Spansion took in last year.
"We see Fab 25 as very important," John Nation, Spansion's vice president of marketing, said in a recent interview.
The Austin fab, he said, employs a manufacturing technology that is "the sweet spot" of what Spansion's most prized customers need.
Spansion, which is a leading maker of nonvolatile flash memory chips, has decided to drop out of what formerly was its largest market, supplying cell phone makers.
Cell phone makers buy a lot of chips, but the field is packed with competitors all trying to undercut one another. Profitability is nearly nonexistent in that market, analysts say.
Instead, the company will concentrate on what it calls the "embedded market," where its chips go into things such as telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, gaming equipment, TV set-top control boxes, automotive electronics, personal computer peripherals, data center servers and networking gear.
Fab 25 is well-suited to make chips for those markets. Spansion officials have repeatedly praised the factory for its efficiency, its adoption of key new technologies and its adaptable, veteran work force.
Spansion does far more business than other flash makers in those market niches, partly because the company has been willing to tweak its products to meet customers' needs.
Even after the bankruptcy filing, customers still loved the company. Stack International, an international association of electronics manufacturers, gave the company its top supplier award in late April, eight weeks after the bankruptcy filing.
The feelings aren't quite as warm among former workers. In February, Spansion laid off 3,500 workers worldwide — including 163 in Austin — and didn't pay them severance. That's primarily because the company was squeezed for cash and wanted to hold onto every nickel in anticipation of the bankruptcy filing.
Since then, things have improved. Spansion had $203 million in cash in early May, up $83 million from the end of the first quarter in March. It has cut its operating costs in half and is generating cash from operations.
"It is amazing how much we have accomplished in such a short time in terms of generating cash and focusing the business," Nation said.
Spansion , which spun off from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in 2005, invested heavily in a new factory in Japan in order to compete more effectively for cell phone customers, who demand cutting-edge memory chips.
Analyst Jim Handy with Objective Analysis in San Jose, Calif., says getting out of the cell phone supply market is the right move. And once Spansion does that, Handy thinks it will sell the Japanese factory, which was completed in 2007 at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion.
The embedded business sounds like a better bet to Handy, because competition is far less fierce and Spansion has longstanding customer ties.
"That is a stable business. It is a place where Spansion has a lot of very loyal customers," Handy said.
Top executives are hopeful that Spansion will emerge from bankruptcy before the end of this year as a smaller but profitable business — one that remains a substantial employer in Austin.
Of course, the scenario that management is proposing is subject to the vicissitudes of bankruptcy court.
Last week, a bankrupcty judge in Delaware rejected the proposed settlement of a patent lawsuit that Spansion brought against industry giant Samsung Electronics Co. Inc. A creditors' committee contended that the proposed $70 million settlement was too broad and too generous to Samsung, though Spansion said it could use the cash and didn't want to spend the money on a trial with an uncertain outcome.
kladendorf@statesman.com; 445-3622
Kirk Ladendorf covers computers and semiconductors for the
American-Statesman.
OK, I answered my own question in docket #595. They had to "assume or reject the Unexpired Leases" by June 29 and they're shooting for Sept 29.
it may be in response to the Samsung deal being canceled. That's a game changer and they may need more time to sort out a plan. They filed for ch 11 March 1 but I can't find the date they were supposed to have a restructuring plan by.