Cypress Semiconductor: 1.25% Convertible Notes

The treasury department staff at Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (Cypress) had just received the final draft of the proposal for the pending $600 million convertible bond issue. This would be the latest in a series of convertible bond issuances by Cypress. But this time the situation was quite different. The last offerings were in 2000 when Cypress’s stock price was trading in the $40 to $50 range for the year and had, in fact, hit a high of $57.75 in May 2000. The picture had changed dramatically in the last three years. One day earlier, on May 16, 2003, the closing price was $10.51. Of course, the situation had been the same for almost all high-tech stocks, but that did not make the prospect of issuing an equity-based security any less painful given the current stock price.