Monday, November 29, 2010

Voltaire (NASDAQ:VOLT): Mellanox Pays $8.75 + 35%

Mellanox Tech. said Monday it has agreed to buy Voltaire Ltd. for $218 million in a deal aimed at broadening its offerings for the data storage market. That industry has seen an uptick in acquisitions over the past year or so as tech firms compete to help companies and government agencies with a huge increase in digital information. EMC bought Data Domain for $2.1 billion last summer. Hewlett-Packard CO. spent $1.5 billion on 3Par Inc. in August. And IBM Corp. bought Netezza for $1.7 billion in September.

Mellanox said it will buy Voltaire for $8.75 per share, or $218 million. That's a premium of about 36 percent over Voltaire's closing share price of $6.43 on Friday. Excluding cash on Voltaire's books, the price comes out to about $176 million. The combined business will have about 700 employees and annual revenue of about $217 million. Both companies are based in Israel. Mellanox, which also has headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., said the deal will add about 2 cents to 5 cents to its earnings for fiscal 2011 and lead to savings of at least $10 million by the end of 2012. Voltaire also has a U.S. headquarters in Chelmsford, Mass.

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