Report: Nordic denies knowledge of ST acquisition interest
Nordic Semiconductor ASA (Trondheim, Norway) is a leader in Bluetooth and other low-power wireless transceivers and is traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Nordic’s shares spiked upwards 6 percent when Milano Finanza reported that European chip company ST had already approached Nordic to see if it could quickly define an offer. “We are not aware of it, so we have no comments,” Reuter reported Elstad as saying.
Nordic reported a net profit of $13.5 million on revenues of $143.2 million in 1Q21. The revenues were more than double what they were in the same quarter a year before. The company has $196.8 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand and an order backlog at the end of the quarter reported to be worth $802.6 million up from $492 million at the beginning of the quarter.
In its results announcement Nordic said that limitations in the supply of wafers are holding the company back from taking advantage of strong demand across all end-user segments.
Nordic’s market capitalization stands a 43 billion krone (about US$5 billion) and he company has a quoted enterprise value of about $4.4 billion. Therefore, a bid from STMicroelectronics would be a departure from that company’s previous style of smaller “tuck-in” acquisitions.
On the other hand such an acquisition would help ST “bulk-up” and protect itself from acquisition in the hot M&A climate of the semiconductor industry and would strengthen its hand in the IoT sector, which is expected to be one of the future high-growth market sectors.
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