Micron Technology Inc yesterday agreed to close the NT$132.5 billion (US$4.19 billion) buyout of its Taiwanese DRAM manufacturing arm in early December, ending months-long speculation about a potential collapse of the deal.
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科), 33 percent owned by Micron, yesterday said its board has approved the deal with Micron’s local subsidiary Micron Memory Taiwan Co Ltd (台灣美光) at NT$30 per common share in cash.
Inotera is to be delisted from the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Dec. 6, after Micron wraps up the purchase of its remaining 67 percent stake in Inotera, the chipmaker said.
The transaction was originally scheduled to be closed in the middle of July, but Micron postponed the deal in June.
“Micron spent a little more time reviewing Inotera’s operations before reaching the agreement,” Inotera chairman Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) said at a news conference yesterday.
As part of the deal, Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), another Inotera major shareholder, agreed to sell its 24.2 percent stake in the firm to Micron for NT$47.6 billion and to spend NT$31.5 billion at most to subscribe to Micron stocks, or stocks and bonds via private placements, Lee said.
Lee is also the president of Nanya.
Micron is scheduled to set its price early next month, according to Lee.
With the investment, Nanya is likely to own as much as a 5.4 percent stake in Micron and to become the largest shareholder of Idaho-based memorychip maker Boise, based on Micron’s closing share price of US$17.5 on Monday.
The deal will also allow Nanya, the nation’s biggest DRAM chipmaker, to secure next-generation 10-nanometer technologies from the US memorychip maker, Lee said.
Lee said Samsung Electronics Co’s suspension of Note 7 production would not significantly reduce demand for mobile DRAM chips.
“I don’t see any impact at all so far,” Lee said.
Other smartphone vendors would replace Samsung’s role in supplying phones to consumers, he said.
Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) expects Apple Inc and China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為), Vivo Electronics Corp (維沃移動通信) and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動) to benefit from Samsung’s suspension of Note 7 sales and exchanges.
The Taipei-based researcher said the suspension of Note 7 production would not impact the price hikes of handset key components including DRAM chips, as Samsung’s competitors are set to increase supply.
Separately, Nanya yesterday said its revenue rose 1.18 percent to NT$3.5 billion last month from NT$3.46 billion in August as shipments and average selling prices rose slightly. Last month’s figure marked its highest level since January.
During last quarter, Nanya’s revenue expanded to NT$102.04 billion, a 10.42 percent increase from the second quarter’s NT$8.93 billion.
Inotera yesterday said revenue jumped 35.5 percent to NT$5.47 billion last month from NT$4.04 billion in August.
In the third quarter, the firm’s revenue surged 20.29 percent to NT$13.93 billion from NT$11.58 billion in the second quarter, it said.
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