Now that's a useless press release. It pains me to find out that the drivel-of-the-day award goes to ATI Technologies (NASDAQ:ATYT), competitor to NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) and supplier of graphics chips that run Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Xboxes, as well as computers from Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), and others.
Today, ATI -- which is one of my holdings -- announced that it purchased an outfit called Macrosynergy, a Shanghai-based arm of XGI Technology, which is, in turn, held by Silicon Integrated Systems, a Taiwanese firm. Dizzy yet?
Purchase price? Not given. Historical financial results of the company purchased? Not given. What was given? Well, ATI's going to increase headcount by more than 100. Aside from that ... how about a sunny news-ready quote from a Gartner analyst? (Insert pap about "further success in China" and "enhancing company's market performance" here.)
Now, you may think it kind of ATI to save the news media out there the trouble of dialing and speaking to the dozens of Quotomatic 5000s out there. But I prefer a little more meat when my company goes out and spends money on another company. And we know precious zilch about this firm, thanks to ATI.
Reports dating back to 2004 speculated on an ATI takeover of XGI, and back then many analysts called the deal unlikely and unnecessary. So what's the point of resurrecting the dead deal? ATI's Paul Lypaczewski told Reuters that it was about "people and location." Fair enough, maybe. Depends on the price.
In the meantime, I continue to believe that ATI will nose up nicely from its latest turn in the trough of the industry cycle. But I'd rather see some real numbers on earnings day. Until then, ATI, spare us the nonsense, please.
NVIDIA has returned more than 123% for investors since David Gardner picked it for Motley Fool Stock Advisor subscribers back in May of 2005. Will he turn his attention to ATI too? A free trial will let you find out.
Microsoft and Dell are Inside Value recomendations.
Seth Jayson has more than one ATI graphics card at home. At the time of publication, he had shares of Microsoft and ATI but no positions in any other company mentioned here. View his stock holdings and Fool profile here. Fool rules are here.
