Second-largest fab GlobalFoundries seeks IPO as soon as 2022

In 2009, AMD split its semiconductor manufacturing business and established GlobalFoundries (GF, referred to as GF) company. Since then, AMD has become a Fabless fabless company. The chip production is mainly handed over to GF foundry, and then AMD has continued to reduce its shareholding. It has no shareholding relationship with GF, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mubadala Investments.

Due to this historical relationship, GF has always been called AMD’s “girlfriend” by players, but the two’s status has long since disappeared, and it has become a purely monetary relationship. After GF announced its withdrawal from 7nm process development and production last year, AMD also The 7nm order was transferred to TSMC. The current 7nm Ryzen and Navi graphics cards are all TSMC foundry, and GF only retains 14nm and 12nm cooperation.

After the big tree of AMD is gone, GF also has to seek a new development direction. GF has hardly made a profit since its establishment ten years ago. This kind of money-burning method makes the oil tyrants unbearable. In the past two years, GF has been in the parent company Muba Under the pressure of Dara, GF carried out a series of reform measures, the core goal of which is to downsize and improve profitability.

To this end, GF has successively sold a number of fabs and businesses. In January 2019, GF sold Singapore’s Fab 3E 8-inch fab to TSMC’s World Advanced Semiconductor for US$240 million. In February of this year, it was reported that GF’s 10 billion US dollar wafer fab plan in Chengdu, China had changed. At present, this project is basically suspended.

In April, GF announced that it had reached an agreement with ON Semiconductor to sell the Fab 10 12-inch wafer fab in New York State to ON Semiconductor for $430 million.

After selling some fabs, GF announced in May that it would sell its ASIC business, Avera Semiconductor, to Marvell, which will pay GF $650 million in cash over the next 15 months, subject to certain conditions This is followed by an additional $90 million, for a total of $740 million, with the deal expected to close in fiscal 2020.

What is behind GF doing this to go public? In fact, the industry has analyzed it for a long time, or it is to sell itself after the spin-off. It was rumored that GF would be acquired by Samsung, but the official has denied the sale. In other words, even if Mubadala wants to get rid of GF, he has the ability to There are not many companies that need to acquire GF – Chinese companies are not bad for money and have needs, but under the current situation, it is the most unlikely.

If you can’t sell it, then you have to prepare another way – IPO listing. A few days ago, Thomas Caulfield, CEO of GF, revealed the idea of ​​​​listing in an interview, and it will be listed in 2022 at the earliest.

For GF, there are many benefits of going public. On the one hand, it can obtain huge capital financing, and on the other hand, it can increase the company’s value. After all, GF is the second largest wafer foundry in the world, and it still has some strengths.