1. Former chairman of Qualcomm Jacobs Millsson Justice plans to acquire Qualcomm;
According to foreign media reports, former chairman of Qualcomm, Paul Jacobs, has approached several global investment agencies to acquire Qualcomm.
According to sources, Jacobs began to contact the investment agency a few days after the White House issued a presidential ban, and has informed the board members about his plan for the acquisition.
People close to the incident said that Jakob had approached Japan’s Softbank. Although Jacob has a good personal relationship with Sun’s justice, it is still unknown whether Softbank will reach into cooperation with Jacob.
Jacob has been chairman of Qualcomm since 2009. During his tenure as chairman, he led the huge patent fight with Nokia and made Qualcomm earn huge profits. At the same time, he chose to invest a lot of money in 4G R&D during the economic crisis of 2008. Let Qualcomm get rich returns on the 4G LTE network during 2010-2014.
Qualcomm planned to vote on the six directors nominated by Broadcom at the general meeting of shareholders on March 6. It has been decided whether it is possible to enter the board of directors of Qualcomm, and in the previous part of the voting, Jacob’s rank was ranked last. 2. They own very few Qualcomm stocks.
On March 9th, Qualcomm announced the removal of the executive chairman of Paul Jacobs, but still retained its directorship.
2. Who will be Broadcom's next acquisition target?
Thomas Krause, head of Broadcom Finance, confirmed on Thursday’s investor conference call that the company is still looking for opportunities for mergers and acquisitions. He said that Broadcom did see some potential acquisition targets consistent with Broadcom's business model, compared to stock repurchases. The return will be higher.
As the M&A terminator in the chip industry, Broadcom Ltd. (AVGO) has ended its acquisition of the ultimate goal Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM). Where does Broadcom go in the future?
After several years of integration in the semiconductor industry, Hock Tan, chief executive of Broadcom, faced such a situation: Few target companies can match Qualcomm's influence. However, his efforts to acquire Qualcomm have just ended in failure. The acquisition could have been the largest acquisition of the technology industry in history, and it is expected that Botong’s revenue will more than double, but it was stopped by US President Donald Trump on Monday.
Chen Fuyang has a strict set of specific conditions for acquisition targets: There are leading products in the market, there is limited competition, there are opportunities to cut costs, and its products can also be targeted to Broadcom's two largest customer groups - handset manufacturers and data centers. Operators. There are not many companies that meet these conditions like Qualcomm.
Raymond James analyst Chris Caso said that there are only so many large companies in the field, and one of them has now been eliminated.
However, Broadcom’s finance director Thomas Krause confirmed on Thursday’s investor conference call that the company is still looking for opportunities for mergers and acquisitions. He said that Broadcom did see some potential acquisition targets consistent with Broadcom’s business model, and share buybacks. Compared to the return will be higher. Krause also said that Broadcom may use the available funds to start the acquisition.
Broadcom announced on Thursday that its first-quarter sales increased to US$5.33 billion, mainly driven by wireless sales growth. Wireless product sales included smart phone chips with radio filters, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other functions. An increase of 88%. The first quarter profit increased to 6.57 billion US dollars, the profit for the same period last year was only 252 million US dollars, including the impact of the termination of business operations.
Broadcom said that it expects to complete its plan to relocate its headquarters from Singapore to the United States before the market close on April 4. This move may be beneficial to Broadcom’s future acquisitions and help it avoid US national security concerns. The acquisition of Qualcomm by Qualcomm The planned abortion is caused by such concerns.
Broadcom shares fell 1.22% in after-hours trading on Thursday to 264.50 US dollars; the regular trading session rose 2.75%.
Amit Daryanani, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, recently compiled a S&P 500 index valued at between US$10 billion and US$120 billion, and profitability, expenses and other financial indicators may attract Chen Fuyang. Daryanani's initial screening Out of about 18 chip companies that meet the above conditions, four of them appear to be suitable potential acquisition targets, although each of these companies has a place where Chen Fuyang may not like.
Many analysts, including Daryanani, believe that Xilinx Inc. (XLNX) with a market value of just under $20 billion is a possible goal.
This Silicon Valley company manufactures programmable chips for a variety of uses including artificial intelligence. As the market leader, Xilinx meets Chen Fuyang's expectations in certain aspects. According to Daryanani, Xilinx products are selling at a high price. In terms of production costs, the gross margin was as high as 70%, but the company's pre-tax profit rate indicated that its various expenses exceeded what Broadcom normally considered reasonable, leaving room for Chen Fuyang to squeeze out more profits.
According to analysts, another Silicon Valley company, Maxim Integrated Products Inc., with a valuation of 13.5 billion U.S. dollars also has the opportunity to be selected. This company manufactures low-end general-purpose chips for a number of markets, including smart phones. If the company is acquired, Broadcom will Or can use its products to expand the high-margin analog chip market with digital chips.
However, analyst Srini Pajjuri of Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc. believes that Maxim's customers are distributed in the automotive, industrial and other Broadcom areas without foundations, and therefore does not completely correspond to Chen Fuyang's strategy.
Both Xilinx and Maxim spokesmen declined to comment.
Pajjuri said that regardless of which of the two potential targets is acquired, Broadcom’s adjusted earnings per share will only increase by several percentage points, compared with the 20% increase that Qualcomm can bring. He also pointed out that based on the current stock price. , The acquisition of these two companies is costly.
According to Factset data, the forward price-to-earnings ratio for the Xilinx stock price is 27 times, and Maxim is 23 times. When Chen Fuyang first proposed the acquisition proposal in November last year, Qualcomm was about 14.5 times.
However, no one thinks that Chen Fuyang will stop searching. Although Broadcom’s $117 billion acquisition of Qualcomm’s efforts ended in failure four months later, Broadcom has successfully completed a series of acquisitions in the past 10 years, helping it to develop to a market value of US$107 billion. Giants.
Caso said that acquiring DNA that is deeply rooted in Broadcom, Chen Fuyang will always look for companies that meet its acquisition criteria.
However, Caso also pointed out that recently, Broadcom’s revenue, profit and cash flow have grown strongly, and Chen Fuyang does not need to rush to act. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, Botong’s revenue grew in the fiscal year ended last October. 33%, profit increased by 39%, free cash flow increased by 58%.
Broadcom’s cash-flow growth rate is higher than that of its semiconductor counterparts. Before finding the next target, Chen Fuyang can increase shareholder’s satisfaction by increasing dividends or repurchasing shares to increase earnings per share.
Nearly a year after Broadcom issued the offer, although the company stated that it will continue to look for mergers and acquisitions opportunities, Chief Financial Officer Thomas Krause stated in a December 2016 earnings conference call that it was from Broadcom. In terms of the situation, the best option is to return a larger part of the cash flow to the shareholders.
Whether or not to make further acquisitions, this idea has gained support from some investors.
Anupam Bose, partner at Clough Capital Partners LP, said that if Broadcom fulfills its promise and returns cash, it will become an attractive investment target.
The risk associated with this potential merger transaction has put pressure on Broadcom's share price. From November 6 last year, Chen Fuyang issued an initial offer and in February of this year, Qualcomm refused to go through an upward adjustment. The stock price of Broadcom has fallen by about 17%. Since then its share price Higher, as of Wednesday's close, rose about 14%; up about 15% so far this year. The Wall Street Journal
3. Want to buy Broadcom? Intel CEO: Not in the interests of the company;
According to the micro-messaging news, Intel recently announced that it intends to complete the acquisition of Broadcom after Broadcom M&A completes Qualcomm. On the 16th Intel CEO Brian Krzyze expressed that in an interview with US financial media CNBC, the acquisition of Broadcom did not meet the requirements. Intel's interests.
Krzych said that I can't talk about rumors, but I can tell you that we have conducted two major acquisitions. Including the acquisition of chip company Altera and assisted driving technology company Mobileye, etc. Therefore, we are currently trying to achieve these successes and correct integration. Goals, because they are the engine of our future development.
Koziqi believes that Intel does not need to buy Broadcom to increase its competitiveness. He also further stated that the 5G market is really important. However, we believe that we already have an end-to-end product in the data center and have been expanding to the baseband chip. Above, these are all very important items in the 5G market.
Ke Zaiqi pointed out that the company's new business is in the data center, Altera's circuit business, and the Internet of Things and other products, that is how to use these products to change Intel's profit model. Krzanich further said that these businesses are reaching two The number of digits grows, and they now account for nearly 50% of Intel's revenue and profits. Therefore, with these efforts, Intel's future changes will be visible.
4. Intel CEO Kodak: Enhancing security from the chip level
Later this year, hardware-level protection will be applied to data centers and PC products.
Author: Section odd again
In order to address the security vulnerabilities discovered by the Google Project Zero team earlier this year, Intel and the tech industry faced a major challenge. Thousands of colleagues throughout the industry have made unremitting efforts to ensure that we can honor our common primary commitment: To protect customers and theirs Data. I have humility and sincere gratitude for the commitment and hard work shown by many colleagues around the world. And I am convinced that when companies need help urgently, companies, even competitors, will work together to cope.
But there is still a lot of work to be done. The security situation is constantly evolving and we know that there will always be new threats. This prompted me to draft in January a pledge to “secure safety first.” Intel has always been very concerned about security, and now, We stand firmer than ever before on the principles I have stated in these commitments: The urgency of the customer first, transparent and timely communication, and ongoing security.
Today, I would like to provide some updates to illustrate our continued progress in fulfilling these commitments. First, we have now released microcode updates for all Intel products released over the past five years in order to protect against Google’s discovery of side channel approach. Vulnerabilities for attack. Second, I would like to express my appreciation to all industry partners and express my gratitude. They work closely with us to develop and test these updates, and to ensure that these updates have been productized.
These updates are now in place and I encourage everyone to ensure that their systems are always up-to-date. This is one of the easiest ways to achieve lasting protection. I would also like to take this opportunity to share more about our future defenses at the hardware level. Details of these vulnerabilities. This is also my commitment at Intel's recent earnings conference call.
Vulnerability variant 1 will continue to be dealt with through software defense. At the same time, we are changing the hardware design to further address two other vulnerabilities. We have redesigned some components of the processor to introduce new protection levels through partitioning. This will also protect against vulnerabilities variant 2 and variant 3. This partition can be viewed as an additional 'protection wall' between application and user privilege levels to set a barrier for intruders.
These changes will be the first to be applied to our next-generation Xeon® Scalable Processors (codenamed Cascade Lake) and 8th generation Intel Core processors expected to ship in the second half of 2018. When these new products become available The key is to ensure that they provide the performance improvements people expect. Our goal is not only to provide the best performance, but also to provide the safest performance.
However, our work is not over yet. This is not a one-time event, but a long-term commitment. We attach great importance to this. Customer first urgency, transparent and timely communication, and continuous security. This is Our commitment, my commitment to all Intel employees.
Note: Original English link https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/advancing-security-silicon-level/known IN