The experiences of the private equity industry in the semiconductor industry should have put them off any further investment in the chip industry, according to John Daane, CEO of Altera.
"Private equity is very much an American mind-set", says Daane, "the idea is to take a company which is not operating very well and tidy it up. It can make sense at certain times for certain industries."
"I think private equity has not much interest in semiconductors", adds Daane, "the unfortunate thing is that they can sell your company on by raising debt secured on the company, and make a lot of money for themselves, and sacrifice the long-term future of your company by loading it with the debt."
Daane pointed to the private equity industry's involvement with Zilog where the investors basically had to write off their investment.
More recently the 2006 purchases of NXP and Freescale have looked particularly unwise with totally unrealistic prices paid and the result that a heavy debt burden has been loaded onto the companies when the private equity people sold on NXP and Freescale to bond-holders.
"The private equity people assumed that the semiconductor industry isn't cyclical and they bought at the peak", says Daane, "since then they've seen revenues impacted and cash-flow impacted."
"We always used to say that when a semiconductor executive said cycles were a thing of the past then we were at the peak of the cycle", cracks Daane.
Asked if Wall Street's problems would affect the industry, Daane replies: "It will be harder to get access to capital. If you're a strong company, and well-capitalised, you'll be fine."
Asked if Altera is a strong, well-capitalised company, Daane replies: "We've got a billion in the bank."
Leave a comment