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Ben Fox Rubin/CNET
Here we go again.
Intel’s plan to acquire fellow chipmaker Altera looks to be heating up again, a little more than a month after the expected deal reportedly fell apart. Now the New York Post cites a source close to the situation saying a $15 billion agreement is back in the works.
“A deal is likely by the end of next week,” the source told the publication.
An Intel representative declined to comment. An Altera representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
If a deal materializes this time around, it will mark a quickening in a consolidation trend in the chips industry, with a handful of multibillion-dollar deals taking place as chipmakers try to come together to endure increasing costs and competition. The report on Intel came the same day chipmaker Avago unveiled its merger deal for Broadcom for $37 billion.
Before then, NXP in March agreed to buy fellow chipmaker Freescale for $11.8 billion, and Qualcomm last October inked a deal for Bluetooth-focused CSR for $2.5 billion last year.
Intel, the largest chipmaker on Earth, makes the processors that power the majority of the world’s personal computers and data-center servers. Altera, meanwhile, focuses on chips called field-programmable gate arrays that customers can reprogram for specific tasks and that are used in the automotive, aerospace and medical industries.
Investors appear heartened by the latest turn, bidding up Altera’s shares by 4 percent to $49, below the $54 the Post cited in its report. In April, the prior deal talks involved an acquisition price in the low $50 range.
The current price is a huge uptick since the Wall Street Journal in late March first reported a deal was being negotiated, with shares up 42 percent since then, as of early trading Friday.
