SiliconBeat

Asyst Technologies, the Fremont maker of automation equipment for the semiconductor and flat panel display industries, received a default notice from the administrative agent for its credit agreement under which it currently has an outstanding balance of $76.5 million, according to a company filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

KeyBank National Association said that Asyst failed to Read the rest of this entry »

In order to increase its “flexibility in meeting its obligations” under its current credit agreement”, Seagate Technology on Friday renegotiated some of the terms of its credit facility with JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas, Keybank National, Wachovia and the Bank of Nova Scotia.

The new terms will allow the company’s “net leverage ratio” — basically the amount of debt it may hold divided by its cash and other short-term investments — to rise from Read the rest of this entry »

For the seventh time in just over two year, Silicon Graphics has modified the terms of a credit agreement it has that is administered by Morgan Stanley. The latest amendment made it possible for Silicon Graphics to defer interest payments due over the next two years by adding their amount to the principal amount, unless certain levels of consolidated earnings before deductions for interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) are reached.

Another new covenant was added regarded minimum required levels of EBITDA, which grow over the next two years. As of March 27, the company must achieve $1 million of EBITDA; $5 million, by June 26; and $10 million by Sept. 25 and fiscal quarter afterwards.

The latest amendment also tightened financial reporting requirements Read the rest of this entry »

Gerald Burnett, chairman of the board of directors at Avistar Communications, personally guaranteed the repayment of funds borrowed and interest accrued under a $10 million line of credit the San Mateo maker of desktop videoconferencing and online collaboration tools has with JP Morgan Chase Bank, according to a regulatory filing Friday.

Avistar, which received a warning last month from Nasdaq that its stock was in danger of being delisted months after it regained compliance from a separate warning issued earlier this year, has been in a patent fight with software giant Microsoft and holding its own. The board voted its chief executive, Simon Moss, a bonus despite the fact that the company failed to achieve pre-established performance goals.

Asyst Technologies finished its “interim goodwill impairment analysis” and is taking an $89.4 million charge to account for it, according to a press release it issued early Tuesday.

The charge would would have made it non-compliant with the old terms of its loan agreement, but those were modified to eliminate the debt-to-capital covenant, replacing it with a new requirement related to setting a maximum pre-tax loss.

But that’s a fix that the company doesn’t expect to last long, since Read the rest of this entry »

Agilent Technologies disclosed on Monday that it had received a notice from Merrill Lynch requiring the company to repay $1.5 billion three years ahead of schedule.

The notice does not signal a liquidity crisis at Agilent, which has $3 billion in restricted and unrestricted cash on hand, according to Rodney Gonsalves, an Agilent spokesman. However, the notice marks one of the first signals that the broader credit crunch
is beginning to be felt by Silicon Valley companies.

Read the rest of this entry »