A variety of SanDisk memory cards are seen with a Western Digital hard drive box in Golden, Colorado in this photo illustration October 21, 2015.
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If the Unisplendour deal occurs as planned, Western Digital will pay $85.10 per share in cash and 0.0176 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock; otherwise, WD will pay $67.50 in cash and 0.2387 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock. With this transaction, Western Digital will double its addressable market and expand its participation in higher-growth segments. The Western-SanDisk venture with Toshiba for making NVMe and 3D flash still remains unscathed. Both companies have strong R&D and engineering capabilities and a rich base of fundamental technologies with over 15,000 combined patents issued or pending worldwide. Western Digital is planning to use the funds to gain financial flexibility and to pursue long-term strategic growth initiatives, thereby strengthening its balance sheet. The company has been plowing in the non-volatile memory storage, systems solutions and manufacturing field for 27 years. The combined company positions Western Digital to vertically integrate into NAND.
Western Digital has about 76,500 employees and generated revenue of $14.6 billion in its fiscal year that ended July 3. He said that makes him wonder whether Seagate missed a meeting. The process will go through, and Western Digital says that the agreement should be done by Q3 of 2016. “Be that as it may, this puts a light on Seagate as we wonder what they will do to address the same problem of heavy flash driven erosion of the magnetic disk market”. Speculations about this transaction has been deep, right after the Unisplendour venture in the data storage company of US$3.8 billion. Bloomberg had earlier stated that in addition to Western Digital, Micron Technology (MU) was also interested in acquiring SanDisk.
While Samsung was still considering of acquiring SanDisk, Western Digital has made a move of closing the deal with the flash memory manufacturer.
Milligan will continue to serve as CEO of the combined company, which will remain headquartered in Irvine, California.
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As the two companies join forces, Western will be big when it comes to storage solutions and innovation to consumers through a wide range of applications out on the market.
