SAN FRANCISCO—Chip vendor Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT) said Monday (April 30) it signed a definitive agreement to acquire connectivity chip vendor PLX Technology Inc. in a cash and stock deal were about $330 million.
Also Monday, IDT announced it acquired frequency control products vendor Fox Electronics for about $30 million in cash.
IDT (San Jose, Calif.) said it would acquire all outstanding shares of PLX. Under the terms of the deal, IDT will pay all PLX shareholders $3.50 in cash plus 0.525 shares of IDT common stock for each share of PLX. Based on IDT's closing price last week, the value of the deal is roughly $7 per share of PLX, IDT said. Both companies' boards unanimously approved the deal, which still requires the approval of PLX shareholders, IDT said.
Ted Tewksbury, IDT's president and CEO, said through a statement that the proposed acquisition of PLX would expand IDT's core serial switching and interface business.
"Our two companies have complementary product sets, technologies and customer bases, and we share a focus on delivering the highest-performance system-level interconnect solutions for data centers and other applications," Tewsbury said.
IDT said it expects to achieve cost synergies, excluding transaction related charges, of more than $35 million in its next fiscal year. The companies expect that the proposed transaction will close as early as the second calendar quarter of this year.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, PLX may solicit additional proposals from third parties for a “go shop” period of 30 calendar days continuing through May 30, IDT said. The merger agreement provides IDT with a customary right to match a superior proposal, the company said.
IDT, founded in 1980, made its name making digital semiconductors, but in recent years has
undergone a strategic shift toward more mixed-signal products. PLX (Sunnyvale, Calif.) is known for PCI Express switches, bridges and 10GBase-T PHY chips and also markets consumer storage controllers as well as general purpose USB