Santa Clara-based semiconductor company AMD announced a significant development in the acquisition of programmable logic device maker Xilinx.
AMD has now declared that it has received all of the required clearances in order to complete the Xilinx acquisition by the end of next week.
“With the exception of the remaining usual closing criteria, all requirements for the deal completion have been met, and the company expects the transaction to close on or about February 14, 2022.”
Remember that AMD announced its intention to acquire Xilinx in October 2020 in an all-stock deal valued at a 20% premium to Xilinx’s share price at the time. Of course, the Chinese government delayed the sale for a long time. Finally, China accepted AMD’s purchase of Xilinx subject to a number of conditions, including a commitment to avoid any bundling deals between AMD and Xilinx goods sold separately. The Chinese State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has also directed that Xilinx’s products remain compatible with AMD’s Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and that the merged entity’s overall compatibility with Chinese market products is maintained.
Xilinx manufactures programmable circuits for wireless networks, and its acquisition will provide AMD with a significant foothold in a constantly developing area. Xilinx has emerged as a prominent participant in the telecommunications industry, with carriers investing billions of dollars to expand the reach of the next-generation 5G wireless network. As a result of its acquisition of Xilinx, AMD will be able to compete more effectively against Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) huge data-center footprint. Furthermore, Xilinx’s FPGAs will help AMD to widen its portfolio by expanding into the rapidly growing AI and networking areas.
Based on AMD’s pre-market stock price, investors do not appear to be excited by today’s development. Of course, the fact that the US CPI rose by 7.5 percent in January 2022, the fastest rate of inflation since 1982, is also weighing on tech-focused growth stocks, paving the way for the Federal Reserve to embrace a far more aggressive interest rate hike regime.