Semtech to buy Gennum for $494 million
Semtech (Camarillo, California) said its management believes the acquisition of Gennum will extend the firm’s portfolio of infrastructure products to the metro, access and enterprise computing markets and will Semtech to provide its customers with more platforms to differentiate their own high-speed voice, video and data transmission products.
Gennum (Ontario, Canada), founded in 1973, designs and sells products that enable video, data and multimedia content to be transmitted at high speed over long distances, while maintaining signal integrity and eliminating the potential for errors in transmission. Gennum’s products are used in broadcast, networking, storage, telecommunications and consumer connectivity equipment.
"We believe Gennum’s unique signal integrity solutions and highly differentiated 1 Gbps to 25 Gbps optical products combined with Semtech’s leading 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps SerDes portfolio will deliver one of the industry’s most complete and robust portfolios to the communications infrastructure, data communications and enterprise computing segments," said Mohan Maheswaran, Semtech’s president and CEO, in a statement.
Semtech said it expects to finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand and new financing. The company said it has received a financing commitment of up to $400 million from Jefferies Finance LLC.
Under the terms of the agree, upon closing of the transaction, Semtech will pay Gennum shareholders CDN$13.55 (about $13.45) for each share of Gennum. The agreement also contains a CDN$19.35 million (about $19.2 million) termination fee payable by Gennum in certain circumstances, the companies said.
Gennum’s board of directors has already unanimously approved the transaction, the companies said.
Gennum has about 450 employees, including more than 240 engineers, and has offices in Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S.