How Micron and Infineon must be kicking themselves that they didn’t take out Hynix when they had the opportunity.
Back in 2001 and 2002, both Micron and Infineon crawled all over Hynix’s books looking to see if they would make a bid, either jointly or separately, to buy the company which was then groaning under debts of $6bn and losing $4bn in 2001 in a lousy DRAM market..
In April 2002, Hynix’s creditors turned down an offer from Micron to buy Hynix for 108m Micron shares worth $3.2bn at the time of the offer, but which had declined, with Micron’s falling share price, to $2.9bn at the time the offer was rejected. The creditors wanted $3.8bn.
Six and a half years on, a resurgent Hynix is the second largest DRAM supplier with 20 per cent DRAM market share, and third largest NAND flash supplier with 19 per cent of the NAND market.
To add insult to injury, Infineon’s shares shot up yesterday on rumours, almost certainly false, that Hynix and TSMC were preparing a bid for Infineon.
It seems that unthinkable that TSMC would bid for an IDM customer, thereby imperilling its relationships with all its other customers by getting into competition with them.
But it goes to show how quickly things can turn round in the semiconductor industry.
From an indebted, unloved, urchin of the industry, Hynix metamorphosed into a supercilious swan.
I bet Micron and Infineon wish that, when they had the chance, they had taken Hynix out.
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