assets

Sun Microsystems last week launched its second major restructuring for the year--with good reason.

The company posted a sizable $1.68 billion net loss in its fiscal first quarter last month, amid a 7 percent decline in revenue, as its traditional business of high- to midrange servers running on Sparc processors took a hit. Add to that a steep sell-off of its stock over the past 12 months, falling from about $25 a share earlier in the year to close at $3.02 a share on Friday.

For the embattled tech titan that's lost its allure over the years, … Read more

The investment firm gobbling up shares of Sun Microsystems might look tough, but it usually avoids playing hardball with executives.

Sun got a wake-up call last week from its largest single investor, Southeastern Asset Management, which added the hardware maker to its list of companies for which it has switched from being a passive investor to an active one, with regard to corporate governance, operations management, and increasing shareholder value. But while the road ahead may be bumpy with this activist shareholder, which had $34 billion in assets under management as of the end of September, it will likely be … Read more

Correction, 11:08 a.m. PDT: This story initially misstated the source of a report about Southeastern. It is IDG.

Something is about to happen at Sun. Unfortunately, no one outside the company seems to know what that "something" is.

As reported in Barron's, Southeastern Asset Management, Sun's largest institutional investor, just upped its stake in Sun to 21.2 percent and recently filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to indicate that it has significant plans for Sun:

The filing says that Southeastern "has talked to" Sun's management, and will … Read more

Sun Microsystems' largest shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, has upped its stake and taken a more aggressive attitude toward its investment, indicating that it will take an active role in maximizing shareholder value through talks with management and third parties, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

Southeastern, an investment advisory service and self-described value investor in large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap companies, increased its stake to 21.2 percent from its previous investment in September of 17.3 percent.

In noting the increased stake and change in its status as a passive investor to … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices reported a much smaller loss for the third quarter and better-than-expected revenue.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker reported third-quarter 2008 revenue of $1.776 billion, including process technology license revenue of $191 million.

Revenue increased 32 percent compared to the second quarter of 2008 and 14 percent compared to the third quarter of 2007.

A positive surprise is the net loss, which was significantly smaller than expected. The company reported a net loss of $67 million, or 11 cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a third-quarter loss of 40 cents per share on $… Read more

Update Tuesday 4:12 a.m. PDT: AMD has made the official announcement of the manufacturing spin-off.

On Tuesday, Advanced Micro Devices will announce a long-expected restructuring, according to sources familiar with the deal.

As expected, the No. 2 supplier of PC processors will split into two companies: one for designing chips, the other for manufacturing them. The capital-intensive business of manufacturing chips is weighing on AMD as it reels under a $5 billion debt load.

The investment is expected to allow AMD to remain directly involved in chip manufacturing--crucial for competing with Intel, which has used its manufacturing prowess … Read more

Over the weekend two new open-source startups caught my eye (and my inbox): OrecX and Transverse. The first is notable for its demonstration that open source is ready for niche applications. The second? Well, the second is notable because after reading through its website I still have no idea what it does.

OrecX is a Chicago-based company that has created the first open-source call recording software company, targeting small businesses. According to the company, "Voice recording is high in demand to create an element of professionalism and quality customer service but because of its cost, it's been out of reach for many businesses."

Fair enough. So, OrecX aims to use open source to lower the cost of tailored voice recording solutions, which are normally priced at $1,000 to $4,000. I doubt many companies will actually customize OrecX's solution, preferring instead to tap into the cost savings, but that is one valid way to leverage open-source software.

Another way is that which Transverse, an Austin-based company, has chosen. Transverse is focused on expanding revenue opportunities for telecom providers with its Customer Asset Management solution and blee(p) platform

Hmm...what does that mean? From the company's website:… Read more

Advanced Micro Devices has its eye on the ultra-low-cost notebook market. Dirk Meyer--the company's new CEO--and other executives discussed this and ways to make the company profitable during the company's earnings conference call Thursday.

Meyer--promoted to CEO on Thursday--made it clear that AMD is serious about the so-called Netbook market, where Intel's Atom processor has been the most successful so far. (Though Intel CEO Paul Otellini made a perplexing comment Tuesday about the Atom processor.)

Netbooks have two hallmarks: they are typically under $400 and are extremely small and light. The Asus Eee PC is the most … Read more

Sybase hit the $1 billion revenue mark in posting its year-end results Thursday--and we're not talking the number of hamburgers served, either.

But is meeting its milestone mark of $1 billion in revenues, along with soundly beating analysts' fourth quarter revenue and earnings forecasts, (as noted by The Street.com), enough to fight off a proxy battle with one of its largest shareholders, Sandell Asset Management.

Sandell wants Sybase to consider selling off its mobility business in an IPO, or even unloading all or part of the company via a sale. And to push the issue, Sandell wants to … Read more