SiliconBeat

NeoMagic, the insolvent chip maker that ceased searching for new business last September, settled last week with its former landlord last week by agreeing to pay $35,000 over the next 60 days to settle the landlord’s claim of $2.04 million. Combined with a Read the rest of this entry »

NeoMagic’s chief financial officer, Steven Berry, decided to throw in the towel, notifying the company a few days before Christmas that he intends to quit as of Jan. 9, according to a filing Monday.

NeoMagic, a Santa Clara chip maker, had the dubious distinction of being the Silicon Valley company with the biggest drop in its share price in 2008 (it virtually lost all of its value, dropping from $3.11 at the beginning of the year to a penny as of Dec. 31)

Berry lasted about a year and a half in the position, having joined NeoMagic in August 2007 from Sipex. No word on any termination benefits Berry might receive. If he quit “for good reason” he would be eligible for six months of sNeoalary, a year of company-paid health coverage, and vesting of his options. Not that that last item means much right now. The option for 85,000 shares he was granted when he started was priced at $3.53.

The seventh anniversary of 9/11 may have been particularly hard for the folks at NeoMagic, the Santa Clara maker of applications processors for handheld computing devices. That was the day the executive management notified employees that 23 of them, or a quarter of the staff, would be terminated, according to an SEC filing the company made late Wednesday. Among those being let go are two executive officers, including Deepraj Puar, its vice president for operations.

NeoMagic expects to complete the layoffs by Oct. 31 and anticipates the moves will cost between $290,000 to $310,000 in one-time termination benefits and payment of accrued vacation. That adds up to 13.6 percent of its cash on hand as of the end of July.

NeoMagic, which has dealt with multiple delisting threats from the Nasdaq stock market over the last few years for various reasons — including a stock price below $1, insufficient shareholder equity, and delinquent filings — has a new problem to deal with: not enough independent directors on either its board of directors or its audit committee.

NeoMagic received notice of the possible delisting from Nasdaq July 8 following resignations the month before of Read the rest of this entry »

NeoMagic, the Santa Clara supplier of chips and software tools to develop multimedia
applications for handheld devices, recently sold eighteen of its U.S. patents and one patent application related to embedded memory products to Faust Communications Holdings for $12.5 million. After paying “agency commissions” on the deal the company got $9.5 million. That works out to a hefty 24 percent in “agency commissions.”

But that was down from the 30.7 percent in expenses the company paid the last time it unloaded its intellectual property, when it sold four patents during its fiscal 2007 second quarter to Samsung Electronics for $1.4 million, of which NeoMagic got $1 million.

NeoMagic’s shares, which fell 47 percent last year, are down another 56.6 percent so far in
2008.