GlobalFoundries starts trading on Wall Street
MALTA – GlobalFoundries is finally the toast of Wall Street.
The Saratoga County-based computer chip maker, which began as an ambitious startup just 12 years ago in an old logging forest off the Adirondack Northway, had its initial public offering on Thursday. at the Times Square offices of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in Manhattan.
Chief Executive Thomas Caulfield, board members, top executives – as well as the company’s investors in Abu Dhabi – were present to ring the ceremonial bell of the stock market opening.
In a sign of public thirst for technology companies, GlobalFoundries has offered more than 55 million shares to investors at a price of $ 47, the highest level of what bankers have suggested. a company, bringing the company nearly $ 3 billion in fresh capital, minus costs. , the third most lucrative IPO in the United States this year.
The stock began trading under the GFS symbol, ending the trading day slightly below its bid price at $ 46.40.
“Today marks an important step as GlobalFoundries, one of the largest IPOs of the year, begins its journey as a publicly traded company,” Nasdaq Stock Market President Nelson Griggs said while introducing Caulfield during the short ceremony before the opening of the trade. .
Caulfield, the son of a New York City firefighter who studied physics and materials science at St. Lawrence and Columbia universities before embarking on a stellar career at IBM, helped turn a fortune. of GlobalFoundries after joining the company in 2014, first as general manager. of Fab 8, the company’s main factory in Malta, and then as CEO starting in 2018.
Caulfield made bold decisions to reshape the company’s business model amid fierce competition from far-reaching rivals. He also moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to New York state.
GlobalFoundries was created in 2009 as a spinoff by Advanced Micro Devices, from which it acquired an existing factory in Germany.
But she built herself in a stand-alone company with the construction of the Fab 8 factory and its offices at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in the cities of Saratoga County in Malta and Stillwater.
GlobalFoundries will use the IPO money – the company will net about $ 2.6 billion – to expand its footprint and manufacturing capacity worldwide as it seeks greater market share.
The company plans to submit construction plans for a second factory in Luther Forest at the end of December. The new factory, or fab, will require the hiring of 1,000 new employees, bringing the total number of workers in Fab 8 to 4,000.
At Thursday’s Nasdaq event, Caulfield made a special mention of the company’s financial support – the Abu Dhabi government – which spent tens of billions of dollars to set up the company in 2009 as a spin-off of ‘AMD.
At times, rumors circulated that Abu Dhabi could sell the company. But Caulfield sold them on a vision of growth amid a “golden age” of semiconductors and an IPO in the future that would provide them with a profit.
“Their patience, their strength, had never given up,” Caulfield said.
At the end of his remarks Caulfield also seemed somewhat moved as he mentioned to his wife, who was also at the ceremony.
“I’m happy to have my wife here today,” Caulfield said. “Thirty-three years and counting on our journey together.”
GlobalFoundries invited 300 people to the Nasdaq event, including more than 100 employees who won the opportunity to attend the IPO launch via lottery.
The lucky winners, from the company’s fabs and offices in New York and Vermont, were taken to Times Square by the company’s Fab 8 campus in Malta in a bus convoy called the GFS Express. The company has 15,000 employees worldwide.
“Everyone had a lot of fun with it,” said Laurie Kelly, the company’s vice president of global communications with the Times Union. “It was so great.”