Reuters: Mellanox says has had multiple approaches
(Reuters) – Israel-based chip designer Mellanox Technologies, whose share price has risen sharply over the past year, has been approached several times by potential buyers, its chairman and chief executive said, adding he wanted to remain independent.
“As long as we think we can grow faster than the company we can merge into, the return on investment will be better to our shareholders, we will stay independent,” Eyal Waldman told Reuters at the High-Tech Industry Association conference.
“Once we think our growth rate will be similar or slower to a company we merge into, we may decide otherwise,” he said on Tuesday.
Software maker Oracle Corp has a 10 percent stake in Mellanox and Waldman said he has a “gentleman’s agreement” with the U.S. company’s CEO, Larry Ellison, that it would not raise its stake. Fidelity owns 14 percent of Mellanox.
“We have a very good feeling about the momentum, the design wins, the applications, the market share we are taking,” Waldman said. “We think we are going to continue growing for a long time, we can grow to over $1 billion in revenue in the future,” he said, declining to give a time frame for his forecast.
Mellanox makes InfiniBand products that allows databases, servers and computers to talk with one another. It has more than 85 percent of that market, which competes with another interconnect technology called Ethernet where the company is a small player…Read More>>
