SanDisk has rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from Samsung Electronics.
Samsung went public with its bid for the flash memory company yesterday. Its $26 per share cash offer valued SanDisk at $5.85bn.
But SanDisk rejected the bid, saying it “significantly undervalues SanDisk given the long-term prospects of its business.”
“We believe Samsung's proposal does not provide appropriate value to our stockholders and is opportunistically timed at the trough of an industry-wide downturn,” said Eli Harari, chairman of the board of SanDisk and CEO.
“In our view, this proposal fails to recognize the value of our patent portfolio, in particular to Samsung, our significant investments in our strategic partnerships, and our technology leadership in 3 and 4 bits per cell flash memory, advanced controllers and three dimensional (3D) semiconductor memory,” said Harari.
He was referring to SanDisk’s partnership with Toshiba to jointly develop certain types of rewriteable 3D memory. There is unconfirmed speculation that the deal with Toshiba may have been made because SanDisk has succeeded in finding a way through to commercialise re-writeable technology, and wants to work with Toshiba to get the technology to the next stage, which is mass-manufacturability.
The agreement builds on SanDisk and Toshiba's three current NAND partnerships - FlashVision, Flash Partners, and Flash Alliance - that see the two companies team on the development and manufacture of NAND-flash memory products.
SanDisk owns a 49.9% interest and Toshiba owns a 50.1% interest in each of the joint ventures. In February, the companies announced a planned fourth partnership and joint 300mm fab.