Replies to post #8166 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Elmer Phud]

MauiDude -

As long as you are the registered owner on the day that MS specifies as the dividend effective day you would be entitled to the dividend. Many people will be playing this arbitrage and it will be factored into the price.

[subzero]

"Would anyone enlighten me about how dividends work ?"

The entire concept of a dividend is a foreign subject on the AMD thread.
A corporation that makes a profit (yes, it may seem counter-intuitive to AMD lovers, but a few corporations now and then do manage to make a profit which is defined as revenues minus expenses minus a bunch of other things like depreciation and taxes) may want to share those profits with its shareholders - and by shareholders, I don't just mean Jerry Sanders and Hector Ruiz and their cronies at AMD. I mean plain old Joe and Jane Sixpack - the loyal investors who probably buy AMD-based PCs and suffer through the instability of these machine just to support AMD.
So, when the corporation has profits and or significant positive cash flow, they take some of the excess money in the bank that is not needed to pay off humungous long term debt and interest payments on loans that were made to pay off other loans or chuaffeurs or body guards or private corporate jets for the Chairman of the Board - and they send a check to each shareholder.
Some corporations even manage to do this on a regular basis - like every quarter.
Intel doesn't do this because they can't afford to do it because AMD has driven Intel into bankruptcy with all the great Opteron sales and Tier 1 OEMS that have dumped Intel for AMD and that great MirrorBit flash technology that no one has really seen yet.
-SZ