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Components & Peripherals News

Intel Reportedly Offering Up To $6B To Buy Mellanox

Dylan Martin
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Intel is reportedly offering up to $6 billion to acquire Mellanox, a data center solutions vendor that has already received interest from Microsoft and Xilinx.

Multiple Israeli news outlets reported the news, pinning Intel's offer between $5.5 billion and $6 billion in cash and stock. At the high end, it would represent a 35 percent premium on Mellanox's stock price on Tuesday market close, which was $81.67 per share. The offer, which was made in recent months, is still open, Calcalist reported.

[Related: AMD Fares Better Than Intel On Wall Street As It Steals CPU Market Share]

Mellanox's stock price rose as much as 8 percent on Wednesday morning.

Intel and Mellanox did not respond to a request for comment by press time. The two companies declined to comment on Calcalist's story.

Intel was previously named as a potential buy among Xilinx and Broadcom in a note written by Piper Jaffray analysts in October. CNBC reported in November that Xilinx, which competes with Intel in data center specialty chips, was reportedly offering $5.5 billion for Mellanox. A month later, Microsoft emerged as another potential buyer after hiring Goldman Sachs to negotiate a deal.

After Mellanox hired a new CFO at the beginning of the year, Piper Jaffray analysts said that the company was likely no longer selling itself but didn't rule out the possibility entirely.

A competitor and customer of Intel, Mellanox sells a variety of data center products ranging from ethernet switches, chips and InfiniBand intelligent interconnect solutions to servers, storage and hyper-converged infrastructure. It received a 5-star rating in CRN's 2018 Partner Program Guide.

Last June, Mellanox, based in Israel, appointed three new board members in a settlement with activist investment firm Starboard Value after the firm threatened to oust all sitting directors.

Intel's reported offer to Mellanox comes as the Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor giant is expecting a slowdown in data center growth, largely due to lower demand from cloud service providers and Chinese customers. The company said it expects growth to pick up again in mid-2019.

Learn More: CPUs-GPUs
Dylan Martin

Dylan Martin is a senior editor at CRN covering the semiconductor, PC, mobile device, and IoT beats. He has distinguished his coverage of the semiconductor industry thanks to insightful interviews with CEOs and top executives; scoops and exclusives about product, strategy and personnel changes; and analyses that dig into the why behind the news.   He can be reached at dmartin@thechannelcompany.com.

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