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Applied Materials ends acquisition talks with ASM International
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ASM International has said that Applied Materials and Francisco Partners had decided to end negotiations to purchase a key part of ASM’s ‘front-end’ wafer processing division. Discussions had progressed until now to include an offer from Applied to purchase the ALD and CVD activities for between $400 and $500 million while a revised offer meant that Francisco Partners was offering between $225 million and $300 million for the remaining units that include epitaxy and vertical furnaces.
In Applied’s latest quarterly conference call, President & CEO, Mike Splinter noted that the company would be ‘disciplined and patient about acquisitions’ during this period of economic uncertainty.
“We think that there’s going to be lots of opportunity for acquisitions but what we’re going to try to do is be very strategic in both our semiconductor space and our solar space to see where there’s technology or products that will add to our offering and really make a strategic difference to the company,” commented Splinter. “As you know, doing an acquisition takes a lot of management bandwidth. We want to make sure the ones that we do are really going to have impact.”