The generally horrible mess that private equity buy-outs have made of semiconductor acquisitions e.g. KKR - NXP and Blackstone - Freescale, could be matched by a 'success' with the planned IPO for KKR/SilverLake-owned chip company Avago Technologies formerly owned by Agilent.
Three years after its $2.7 billion buy-out, private equity ownership has reduced the number of jobs at Avago from 6,800 to around 3,600.
KKR/SilverLake sold off Avago businesses for a total of $749 million.
In the proposed IPO it plans to raise $400 million of which the owners intend to keep $160m.
The questions one has to ask are:
Why IPO now when the IPO market is particularly shitty?
Is it because everything has been flogged off that could be flogged off?
Is it because the R&D budget been cut to the point where it can be cut no further?
Is it because the future for Avago is now totally shit?
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