After a few weeks of rumor, as well as a few years of hearing, AMD went first to the complete acquisition of FPGA maker Xilinx. The deal includes an all-stock exchange, exploiting AMD's sizeable share price to allow an equivalent $143 per Xilinx share – current AMD shareholders will still own 74 percent of the merged business. In comparison, Xilinx shareholders will own 26 percent. The combined $135 billion entity would total 13,000 engineers and increase AMD's total addressable market to $110 billion. The acquisition's main reasons are assumed to be Xilinx's adaptive computing solutions for the data center label.
Part of the acquisition enablement is AMD's market capitalization of the amount of $100 billion. Much of the industry will draw comparisons to Intel's acquisition of FPGA-manufacturer Altera for $16.7 billion in December 2015. High-performance FPGA markets, as well as SmartNICs, adaptive SoCs, and other controllable logic, naturally exist more than most other markets in data center markets. With AMD's recent growth in enterprise space with its Zen-based EPYC processor lines, a natural progression that could be concluded would be synergizing high-performance computing with adaptable logic under one roof. Thus, it means that precisely the conclusion that Intel already came to several years ago.AMD announced last quarter that it had broken above 10% of the market share of Enterprise with its EPYC product lines, and today's earnings call is also expected to see growth. AMD is now reporting sales up +56 percent year-on-year across the business, with +116 percent in the Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom markets.
AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su :
"Our acquisition of Xilinx marks the next leg in our journey to establish AMD as the industry's high-performance computing leader and partner of choice for the largest and most important technology companies in the world. This is truly a compelling combination that will create significant value for all stakeholders, including AMD and Xilinx shareholders, who will benefit from the combined company's future growth and upside potential. The Xilinx team is one of the strongest in the industry, and we are thrilled to welcome them to the AMD family. By combining our world-class engineering teams and deep domain expertise, we will create an industry leader with the vision, talent, and scale to define the future of high-performance computing."
Xilinx CEO Victor Peng :
“We are excited to join the AMD family. Our shared cultures of innovation, excellence, and collaboration make this an ideal combination. Together, we will lead the new era of high performance and adaptive computing. Our leading FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs, accelerator, and SmartNIC solutions enable innovation from the cloud to the edge and end devices. We empower our customers to deploy differentiated platforms to market faster and with optimal efficiency and performance. Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our data center business and enable us to pursue a broader customer base across more markets.”
AMD will Confront Nvidia in the IDC Non-computing Market
Xilinx, one of the "leaders" in the data center heterogeneous computing market, with its ACAP adaptive computing acceleration platform, coupled with its real-time (RT) servers, can provide comprehensive solutions for live streaming, telemedicine, tele-education, e-sports/games streaming, webcasting, social video networks, live sports, and other business scenarios. AMD's acquisition will strengthen its data center product lineup, especially in the heterogeneous computing market, in direct opposition to NVIDIA.
Last Thursday, Intel's quarterly profit fell 29%, causing its stock to lose more than 10%, while AMD reported on Tuesday that its quarterly profit rose 148%.AMD stock, which was priced at about $2 a share five years ago, is now trading at about $82, 40 times more than five years ago, and has risen nearly 80% this year, with a current market capitalization of almost $100 billion.
Improving AMD's Gross Profit
Xilinx was founded in 1984, is the originator of FPGA chips. FPGAs are incredibly widely used in the communications field. Huawei is one of its largest customers, affected by the U.S. sanctions against Huawei. The company said last week that its revenue fell by 8%. Still, Xilinx's gross profit level is much higher than AMD. Xilinx continues to generate significant money flow (Xilinx's market capitalization is about $28 billion). After the deal's completion, AMD's overall gross profit level will be highly improved. Thus, Wall Street highly supports the agreement.
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