SiliconBeat

Micrel, the San Jose chip maker who last year successfully fought off a proxy battle with Obrem Capital, its largest independent stockholder, spent $20 million May 7 buying back 3.1 million more of Obrem’s holdings, in addition to the 1.6 million shares it purchased in February.

The company picked up the shares at a discount, Read the rest of this entry »

Altera, the San Jose maker of analog chips, announced today that it will incur about $6 million in restructuring-related charges, including $3.5 million in employee termination payments connected with the cutting of 33 positions, or a little over 1 percent of its work force. The per-job-cut rate for those terminations works out to $106,061 each.

Charges related to the termination of Read the rest of this entry »

Micrel, the San Jose chip maker who last year successfully fought off a proxy battle with Obrem Capital, its largest independent stockholder, spent $10 million this week to buy back 1.6 million of Obrem’s 10.7 million shares.

The company paid Obrem 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 »

Oracle has decided to dedicate as much as $8 billion more to its stock repurchase program, raising the total available to it to $9.3 billion, according to a regulatory filing it made with the SEC today. The stock buyback is intended to help offset its employee stock plans as well as help it buy shares “opportunistically” — when they are selling at prices to low for the company to resist.

The company spent $7.14 billion buying back 24.1 million shares in its fiscal 2008 fourth quarter ended May 31, paying an average of $20.76 per shares. Oracle’s stock hit a 52-week low of $15.28 per share earlier this month. They gained $1.14, or 6.7 percent in regular trading Monday before the share repurchase was announced. They gained 29 cents, or 1.6 percent, more in after hours trading, according to Yahoo Finance.

Maxim Integrated Products, the Sunnyvale chip maker that recently completed a major restatement project caused by a history of incorrectly priced stock option grants, said it expects to report sales of about $500 to $502 million for its fiscal 2009 first quarter ended Sept. 27, slightly below the consensus estimate of $504 in a Thomson Reuters survey. The company said per-share profits would now range from 19 to 22 cents, a bit below the 23 cents most analysts had expected.

The results will include an estimated $30 to $32 million in charges “primarily related to Read the rest of this entry »

Lam Research, the Fremont supplier of chip-making equipment whose stock is down 26 percent so far this year, said its board authorized buying back up to $250 million worth of its own stock, effective immediately, according to a filing Monday with the SEC.

It is the first stock buyback since fiscal 2007 when the company spent Read the rest of this entry »

Adept Technology, the Livermore maker of manufacturing robotics, is set to go to court Sept. 16 to try and stop its eviction from its headquarter facilities in the Tri-Valley Technology Center on Triad Drive, according to one of its SEC filings Wednesda. It’s landlord, who gave the company notice back in April that it wished to terminate its lease, and saying that the company owed it a $1 million “termination fee.” The July deadline came and went with Adept still occupying the space. A second termination notice was served giving the company until Aug. 26 to vacacte the premises, which Adept still has not done. Read the rest of this entry »

VeriSign filed details of the compensation package being given to founder James Bidzos, who returned to the company as its interim chief executive at the end of June. His annual salary was set at $900,000, half of which is guaranteed for six months, regardless of whether a permanent CEO is hired.

Bidzos also received a grant of restricted stock worth $4 million when they were approved Aug. 4. The stock vests quarterly over a one-year period, no matter what.

VeriSign shares plunged 12.7 percent yesterday after the Internet infrastructure company reported a wider second-quarter loss as it absorbed the costs of a major reorganization. The drop may have helped hasten a move by the company’s board authorizing a stock buyback of $680 million worth of VeriSign shares.

Intel, the world’s largest maker of chips and Silicon Valley’s second largest company, released results for its second quarter that pleased Wall Street and set an at least initially positive tone to earnings season for technology companies.

The company was flush enough with cash to spend Read the rest of this entry »