Amkor Acquires Unitive
Online staff -- Electronic News, 7/21/2004
Amkor Technology Inc. plans to acquire privately held Unitive Inc. and obtain a 60 percent interest in Unitive Semiconductor Taiwan Corp. (UST) for a combined purchase price of $48 million.
North Carolina-based Unitive and UST, a joint venture between Unitive and various Taiwanese investors, provide wafer level technologies and services for flip chip and wafer level packaging applications. More specifically, with these acquisitions Amkor aims to gain technology for electroplated wafer bumping and turnkey wafer level chip scale packaging, together with installed and operationally qualified, high volume 200mm and 300mm electroplated wafer bumping and wafer level packaging manufacturing operations.
"Flip chip is already a conventional packaging technology for microprocessors and is becoming mainstream for graphics, ASICs and chipsets," said Bruce Freyman, Amkor's president and COO, in a statement. "As the market for flip chip gains traction, our customers have been asking for end-to-end solutions for flip chip on 200mm and 300mm wafers that incorporate bump, probe test, assembly and final test. These transactions provide Amkor with leading-edge technology, a strong applications development team and high volume production capacity for 300mm wafers that is operating with proven technology 18 to 24 months ahead of a comparable internal investment timeline. As a result, we expect to be in a much stronger position to increase our share of the PC graphics and chipset market."
The two separate transactions come to a combined cash purchase price of $48 million, with the assumption of about $23 million of debt. Amkor plans to pay $32 million at closing with the $16 million balance to be paid one year later. In addition, Amkor will retain a call option to acquire the remaining 40 percent of UST at any time over the next 18 months for $18 million (611 million Taiwanese dollars).
The Unitive contract terms provide for a performance based earn-out that is capped at $55 million and is payable one year from closing in cash or stock at Amkor's discretion. The UST transaction also provides for a performance based earn-out that is estimated to be $2 million.
When the transactions close in August, Unitive and UST will become subsidiaries of Amkor. Amkor said it will keep the current North Carolina Unitive and Taiwan UST management teams in place. Unitive will be integrated into Amkor's turnkey assembly and test solutions, while UST will work side-by-side with Amkor's Taiwan operations. |
