Zaphod said:
How much of IMG Tech stock is out and about?
117 million pounds. That's $207M in USD, so they could expect to be able to buy it at about $250M.
Are there a clear controlling majority?
Nope, not according to the holding reports I've seen, but ofc there could be a lot of 1-2% holders who agree with each other (i.e. practically the same holder).
In an open bid I can't see them paying less than $300 million
Well, as I said above, I think $250M is a perfectly reasonable bid at the current value. Of course, it could increase in the near future...
and that's a decent lump of cash to cough up for both companies
It is, even more so for a company that's right now that even in the black, profit-wise. If you look at NVIDIA and ATI's balance sheets though, it remains quite reasonable: NVIDIA has $750M cash & marketable securities with no debt ($1450M assets, $427M liabilities; you do the math). And ATI has $224M cash and $363M short-term investments (I assume that's $600M compared to NVIDIA's $750M), with $30M long-term debts. $250M out of that, part of which could be in shares(!), feels relatively reasonable to me. Even $300M would be if the share percentage was quite high, although that might please the investors a tad less.
WRT ULi: I feel this text, from a 13th of June 2005 Anandtech article, explains the acquisition strategy nicely:
The saying in Taiwan goes something like this - "There are three Taiwanese chipset manufacturers (ULi, SiS and VIA) and only one of them is making any money - ULi."
ULi's business is profitable because they are only providing South Bridges and as such, they can piggy-back off of ATI's marketing by providing South Bridges to OEMs interested in using ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 chipsets. Unfortunately for ULi, this isn't a very good long-term business plan as there will come a day when ATI's own South Bridges are perfected.
ULi is therefore trying to make their way into the high-end chipset market, but with NVIDIA and Intel as the chief competitors there, it will be an uphill battle. Many manufacturers expressed interest in ULi, but we will have to wait and see to find out if it actually translates into a viable competitor.
Obviously, NVIDIA's goal in this - besides getting a new pool of top-notch engineers - is screwing VIA, SiS and ATI at the same time. VIA and SiS by getting a much better positioning against them in their key markets, and ATI by making sure they don't have access to rescue plans if they fuckup their southbridges once again. This might also force ATI to phase out its original Crossfire chipset faster than expected, preventing them from gaining momentum in the low-end market.
Uttar
