Wafer makers Silitronic, GlobalWafers, prep merger
The two companies are looking to agree a merger in second week of December 2020, subject to the approval of Siltronic’s supervisory board and GlobalWafers’ board of directors. GlobalWafers said it intends to make a voluntary offer of €125 per Siltronic share.
GlobalWafers is one of the three largest silicon wafer manufacturers in the world. It’s product applications extend through power management, automotive, IoT, memory, sensors and MEMS. GlobalWafers operates out of 15 facilities in Taiwan, Japan, USA, Korea, Italy, Denmark, Malaysia, and China.
A combination of GlobalWafers and Siltronic would create the world’s largest wafer supplier with about one third of the global market.
GlobalWafers’ offer price represents a premium of 48 percent over the volume-weighted average share price over the previous 90 days.
Wacker Chemie AG holds 30.8 percent of the total Silitronic shares outstanding and has been involved in the discussion, which have been going on for several months and have included several price revisions, GlobalWafers said.
The transaction would be subject to regulatory approvals as well as other customary conditions.
The combined company would be the world’s largest silicon wafer maker by revenue, with a market share of 32% to 35%, said Hsia.
The takeover would mark the end of a disposal process from wafers for Wacker Chemie, the company majority-owned by billionaire Chairman Peter-Alexander Wacker, which began with Siltronic’s public listing in 2015, 11 years later than first planned. Wacker at the time retained a majority holding in Siltronic, which it subsequently reduced, the remainder of which it now seeks to divest at a time analysts predict wafer prices to rise with the market potentially facing supply shortages.
Siltronics revenue in 2019 was about €1.3 billion (about US$1.55 billion) while GlobalWafers reported 2019 revenue of about NT$58 billion (US$2 billion).
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