Abu Dhabi holds 8.1% stake in AMD following $622M investment

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 11/16/2007

The Abu Dhabi government’s wholly-owned investment and development subsidiary Mubadala Development Co. has invested $622 million in Sunnyvale, Calif.-based microprocessor maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Mubadala is receiving 49 million newly-issued shares at a price per share of $12.70, the closing price of AMD common stock on November 15, for its non-controlling, minority investment.

AMD stated Mubadala will not receive any board representation as part of the deal and that the transaction does not present a controlling investment or acquisition subject to review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

AMD said it received approximately $608 million, after reimbursing Mubadala for approximately $14.6 million in expenses and will use the net proceeds from the sale of the shares of common stock for general corporate purposes including accelerating its long-term, customer-focused growth strategy by investing in R&D, product innovations and manufacturing excellence.

AMD chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz said the investment strengthens AMD’s ability to deliver customer-centric innovation and choice to the marketplace, creating greater value for its shareholders.

Also this week, as the first step in the launch of its upcoming enthusiast platform codenamed “Spider,” AMD unveiled its ATI Radeon HD 3800 series of graphics processing units (GPU), which it said is the world’s first series of graphics processors to deliver Microsoft’s DirectX 10.1 support, 55 nm process technology and tri and quad multi-GPU support with ATI CrossFireX.

The ATI Radeon HD 3800 series will be introduced in two variants from $179 for the ATI Radeon HD 3850 with 256MB of GDDR3 memory and from $219 for the ATI Radeon HD 3870 with 512MB GDDR4 memory. The GPUs are manufactured on TSMC’s 55 nm process technology, which AMD said allowed for a 12X increase in performance-per-watt over the previous generation with a significant reduction in die size.

In yet more AMD news this week, the company announced the ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac, which integrated two TV tuners to receive off-the-air ATSC/HDTV broadcasts as well as analog television programming. This new TV tuner solution joins AMD’s six TV Wonder offerings for the PC platform, the company noted.

The ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac is meant to transform Mac desktops and notebooks into TV entertainment systems, with full personal video recorder functionality.

With the included ATI tvPORTAL TV application for Mac, users can watch, pause, or record high definition TV1. The ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac produces sharp, true-to-life analog TV images and with full featured electronic programming guide in ATI tvPORTAL, users can schedule and manage TV recordings.

The ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac is scheduled to be available later this month.

Finally, AMD’s chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz was elected vice-chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association.