Semi-conductor group Alphawave IP is to become the latest major London listed company to leave the stock market after agreeing a £1.8 billion takeover from US chip giant Qualcomm.
The Gresham Street headquartered company told shareholders this morning it had finally struck a deal with its suitor after an extension for the takeover deadline was extended for the fifth time last week.
Anglo-Canadian Alphawave listed in London in May 2021 when it sold £856 million of shares in an IPO valuing it at £3.1 billion.
It is the latest in a stream of tech companies to quit their London listings. Last week fintech Wise said it is switching its primary listing to America.
Alphawave, which is advised by Goldman Sachs and BMO, originally confirmed it was in talks about a sale as long ago as 1 April. But it has repeatedly pushed back the so called ‘put up or shut up’ deadline.
Under the terms of the now agreed acquisition Alphawave shareholders will receive $2.48 in cash for each share, equivalent to 183 p. It represents a 96% premium to the share price before the start of takeover speculation.
Alphawave shareholders have an option to receive the cash in sterling or in new Qualcomm shares at a rate of 0.01662 Qualcomm shares for each Alphawave share held.
There is also a further alternative of 0.00964 of a New Series A Qualcomm Exchangeable Security and 0.00698 of a New Series B Qualcomm Exchangeable Security for each Alphawave share.
Tony Pialis, President and chief executive officer of Alphawave, said:”Qualcomm’s acquisition of Alphawave represents a significant milestone for us and an opportunity for our business to join forces with a respected industry leader and drive value to our customers.
“By combining our resources and expertise, we will be well-positioned to expand our product offerings, reach a broader customer base, and enhance our technological capabilities. Together, we will unlock new opportunities for growth, drive innovation, and create a leading player in AI compute and connectivity solutions. For our shareholders, the Alphawave Board is pleased that Qualcomm’s offer provides an opportunity to realise compelling value for their shares.”
Cristiano Amon, President and chief executive officer of Qualcomm, said:”Under Tony’s leadership Alphawave has developed leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies that are complementary to our power-efficient CPU and NPU cores. Qualcomm’s advanced custom processors are a natural fit for data centre workloads.
“The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high growth areas, including data centre infrastructure.”