SiliconBeat

Applied Micro Circuits, which warned it was planning a “restructuring” without giving any details when it filed its earnings late last month, provided some in a filing with the SEC late Thursday.

The company’s board approved a restructuring plan Jan. 27 that includes letting go of “slightly over 100 people.” In October the company announced it would Read the rest of this entry »

The board of directors at Applied Micro Circuits (Nasdaq:AMCC) approved a $100 million stock repurchase program Wednesday, the company revealed in a quarterly filing today. Details of the program “are still to be determined.”

The amount is about a third of the company’s total market value as of Friday. It is also slightly more than half of the Sunnyvale chip maker’s total Read the rest of this entry »

As it did just about this time last year, Applied Micro Circuits told some of its employees today they had to go, according to a regulatory filing Monday, as the company enacted its sixth restructuring in four years. The move affects about 5 percent of its work force, which numbered 583 at the end of its last fiscal year on March 31, meaning that about 29 employees got pink slips today.

The company’s board of directors approved the plan back on Aug. 20 and says that it expects to incur cash charges of about Read the rest of this entry »

Applied Micro Circuits has sold a series of patents, patent applications and associated rights to some of its technologies to wireless chip maker  Qualcomm for $33 million to be paid over the next three years, according to a filing with the SEC today. Applied Micro will retain the non-exclusive right to make and sell its existing products that use technology covered by the patents.

The contract terms include a provision under which Qualcomm could withhold Read the rest of this entry »

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.