Analyst says Spansion IPO may be delayed

Spansion, the flash memory joint venture owned by Advanced Micro Devices and Fujitsu but managed by AMD, may get delayed, according to Les Santiago at Piper Jaffray.

Santiago's opinion largely rests on the factors that were present when AMD first announced plans to spin off Spansion in April. Namely, that Spansion is losing lots of money and market share in a tough market. According to Spansion's SEC filings, Spansion lost $128 million in fiscal 2003, $19.7 million in fiscal 2004, and $108.8 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2005.

For the quarter just ended, Spansion posted an operating loss of $90 million. Sure, Pets.com was losing money too when it went public, but at least tney had a cute sock puppet. Spansion has yet to declare an imaginary animal mascot.

The company has also endured product delays. In the second half of last year and the first part of this year, it put off a new flash memory chip for phones to conduct further testing, the most recent SEC filings said.

AMD has never actually set a date for the IPO. All that the documents filed with the SEC say is that Spansion will deliver shares to underwriters sometime in 2005.