SiliconBeat

In a filing Thursday, Applied Micro Circuits reported that its board “approved a restructuring plan back on August 21 to reorganize the Company’s operations and reduce its workforce” back on August 21. It’s the company’s fifth restructuring plan since 2003.

The plan became effective Thursday, the same day as the filing, and is to affect
“approximately 4 percent” of its employees. The total severance cost involved in laying them off — approximately 25 folks based on the 619 workers Applied Micro had at the end of its fiscal year March 31 — was estimated to be between $600,000 to $900,000.

The Sunnyvale maker of integrated circuits, which spent $9.1 million in its last quarter to buy back 2.9 million shares, says savings from the restructuring should amount to
“approximately $2.8 million annually.”

In a filing three days earlier the company reported that its compensation committee adopted a new executive severance benefit plan that increased what some of its executives would get in case they are terminated after a “change in control.”

The filing didn’t mention it was an increase, but in comparing the new plan with terms listed in the company’s most recent proxy, we found out that the salary benefit paid to its chief executive if terminated after the company was bought, for example, would rise from $600,000 to $800,000, that a bonus that would have been pro-rated depending on when the change in control took place under the previous plan will now be a full year’s worth no matter what (currently $300,000), that the payment of extended health benefits would be lengthened from 18 to 24 months, and that the vesting of equity awards would be extended from those that would have vested over an additional 24-month’s to instead include 100 percent of all unvested shares.