The GP Blog
GPV 2011 First Half Update
July 22, 2011:
I recently attended Semicon West (semiconductor equipment) in S.F., and compared to the Sensor Expo in June it was a bit of a disappointment. The SEMI market is expanding, but the number of customers is shrinking as fabs (TSMC, UMC, etc.) take over more of the business, so the importance of this show is dropping. The Solar Show was better attended, but it looked more like a Home Depot exposition than a tech show.
M&A for technology companies for the first half of 2011 was strong according to several sources. One deal that was the talk of Semicon was the Advantest/Verigy acquisition, which leaves only 2 major players in the ATE market (Advantest and Teradyne). Other deals of note so far in 2011 are Microsoft/Skype, Intel/McAfee, Texas Instruments/National Semiconductor, and two hard disk drive deals: Seagate/Samsung HDD Division and Western Digital/Hitachi HDD Division.
The biggest news of the first half was perhaps the resurgence of tech IPO's, such as LinkedIn, Pandora, Freescale, Avaya, and others. This should help raise all boats, as a positive IPO market helps drive valuations and makes everyone feel better about the state of the M&A market. US companies are holding record amounts of cash, and the weak US$ makes acquisitions look cheap for Europeans and Asians, so more M&A should follow in the second half of 2011.
posted at September 13 2011 21:53 by webadmin
Comments
There are currently no comments.