Alphawave reaches deal on Qualcomm takeover
Alphawave is poised to become the latest tech firm to quit the London Stock Exchange after reaching a $2.4bn (£2.8bn) deal to be acquired by Qualcomm.
The British semiconductor business said its board would now recommend to shareholders the terms of the acquisition after weeks of talks, which began in April.
The cash offer of 183p per share represents a near-doubling on the closing price of Alphawave’s shares prior to the announcement of takeover discussions and a 59 per cent premium over Alphawave’s average share price across the previous six months.
Shareholders will also be given the option to exchange their Alphawave shares for shares in Nasdaq-listed Qualcomm.
Alphawave CEO Tony Pialis said: “Qualcomm’s acquisition of Alphawave represents a significant milestone for us and an opportunity for our business to join forces with a respected industry leader and drive value to our customers.
“By combining our resources and expertise, we will be well-positioned to expand our product offerings, reach a broader customer base, and enhance our technological capabilities.
“Together, we will unlock new opportunities for growth, drive innovation, and create a leading player in AI compute and connectivity solutions.”
The deal adds Alphawave to a growing list of tech firms that have departed the London Stock Exchange after a US takeover in the past 18 months, including cybersecurity firm Darktrace and food delivery app Deliveroo.
The agreement also means there are now vanishingly small numbers of British semiconductor businesses that do not have overseas owners. Hertfordshire-based Imagination Technologies, which has supplied parts of Apple’s iPhone, was acquired by Chinese-based Canyon Bridge in 2017, while the Newport Wafer Fab in Wales was acquired by US firm Vishay last year and semiconductor design giant Arm is majority owned by Japanese firm SoftBank after its acquisition in 2016.
Ensilica and IQE are among the last British semiconductor businesses to remain London-listed.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said: “Under Tony’s leadership Alphawave has developed leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies that are complementary to our power-efficient CPU and NPU cores.
“Qualcomm’s advanced custom processors are a natural fit for data centre workloads. The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high growth areas, including data centre infrastructure.”
Chinese divestment
Amid the takeover, Alphawave has confirmed its disposal of its Chinese joint venture WiseWave to a consortium of Chinese investors.
Inheriting the Chinese JV may have proved problematic for prospective owners Qualcomm, amid heightened trade tensions between the US and China as well as strict rules on exports of semiconductor technology.
Alphawave did not confirm the size of the transaction but had previously valued its investment in WiseWave as $nil for accounting purposes, because the firm’s cumulative losses exceeded its original investment.