Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover

Friday the Wall Street Journal reported Qualcomm recently "made a takeover approach" to Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion ("according to people familiar with the matter...")A deal is far from certain, the people cautioned. Even if Intel is receptive, a deal of that size is all but certain to attract antitrust scrutiny, though it is also possible it could be seen as an opportunity to strengthen the U.S.'s competitive edge in chips... Both Intel and Qualcomm have become U.S. national champions of sorts as chip-making gets increasingly politicized. Intel is in line to get up to $8.5 billion of potential grants for factories in the U.S. as Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger tries to build up a business making chips on contract for outsiders... Both Intel and Qualcomm have been "overshadowed" by Nvidia's success in powering the AI boom, the article points out. But "To get the deal done, Qualcomm could intend to sell assets or parts of Intel to other buyers... A deal would significantly broaden Qualcomm's horizons, complementing its mobile-phone chip business with chips from Intel that are ubiquitous in personal computers and servers..."Qualcomm's approach follows a more than three-year turnaround effort at Intel under Gelsinger that has yet to bear significant fruit. For years, Intel was the biggest semiconductor company in the world by market value, but it now lags behind rivals including Qualcomm, Broadcom, Texas Instruments and AMD. In August, following a dismal quarterly report, Intel said it planned to lay off thousands of employees and pause dividend payments as part of a broad cost-saving drive. Gelsinger last month laid out a roadmap to slash costs by more than $10 billion in 2025, as the company reported a loss of $1.6 billion for the second quarter, compared with a $1.5 billion profit a year earlier... Intel earlier this year began to report separate financial results of its manufacturing operations, which many on Wall Street saw as a prelude to a possible split of the company. Some analysts have argued Intel should be split into two, mirroring a shift in the industry toward specializing in either chip design or chip manufacturing. Splitting up immediately might not be possible, however, Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon said in a recent note. Intel's manufacturing arm is money-losing and hasn't gained strong traction with customers other than Intel itself since Gelsinger opened the factories to outside chip designers three years ago. Gelsinger has been doubling down on the company's factory ambitions, outlining spending of hundreds of billions of dollars building new plants in the U.S., Europe and Israel in recent years. Given Intel's market value, a successful takeover of the entire company would rank as the all-time largest technology M&A deal, topping Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Intel's stock "had its biggest one-day drop in over 50 years in August after the company reported disappointing earnings," reports CNBC. Partly because of that one-day, 26% drop, Intel's shares "are down 53% this year as investors express doubts about the company's costly plans to manufacture and design chips." But the Register remains skeptical about Qualcomm taking over Intel:Chipzilla may not be worth much to Qualcomm unless it can renegotiate the x86/x86-64 cross-licensing patent agreement between Intel and AMD, which dates back to 2009. That agreement is terminated if a change in control happens at either Intel or AMD. While a number of the patents expired in 2021, it's our understanding that agreement is still in force and Qualcomm would be subject to change of control rules. In other words, Qualcomm wouldn't be able to produce Intel-designed x86-64 chips unless AMD gave the green light. It's also likely one of the reasons why no one bought AMD when it was dire straits; whoever took over it would have to deal with Intel.

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