Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) Retires Debt, Picks on NVidia

On Monday Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) published a new filing informing of plans to reduce the company’s debt. The market’s reaction was underwhelming, with AMD down for two sessions and barely closing green yesterday, at 0.5% up.

The 8-K filing came on Monday, informing of the settlement of 8.125% senior notes due 2017 that were tendered before midnight, June 19, 2014. The filing further states that the tender offer extends until July 3, unless the company further extends or terminates it. The resources for the purchase come from net proceeds from the recent offering of 7.00% senior notes that are due 2024. This debt settlement is part of an ongoing effort to restructure the company and turn it around after a long rough patch.

AMD is still huffing and puffing at NVidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) and their exclusive deals with game developers. In a recent interview with Maximum PC, AMD executive and former NVidia employee Richard Huddy panned NVDA for their exclusivity deals with various game developers that, according to him, hurt AMD. Huddy further highlighted NVidia’s deals with publishers to use NVDA‘s GameWorks, which hurts AMD benchmark results in said games.

NVDA‘s closed and pre-compiled GameWorks libraries are injected into games to provide special features. AMD‘s very own Mantle API is taking a different route – openness and flexibility, without what AMD perceives as arm-twisting. Perhaps it’s a bit too much to imagine that NVidia is putting special clauses in its co-development contracts with game makers that explicitly forbid them from working with AMD to optimize the product. Regardless, such contracts also have strict non-disclosure clauses so the truth will likely remain a mystery.

AMD ran up briefly after the opening bell but has slipped below its last close and is currently trading 0.25% in the red.