Acquisition fails! Renesas abandons acquisition of a chipmaker

In its first failed takeover in nearly two years, Renesas has gone on a buying spree.

On February 23rd Renesas announced it was ending a letter of intent to buy Sequans, a French maker of wireless chips and modules for the Internet of things. Jussas, meanwhile, has largely abandoned its bid for Sequans after 2023 an offer in September.

Renesas announced in August that it would buy Sequans, a 2023 of its own. The two companies reached a basic agreement under which Jussas electronics would offer to buy all shares in Sequans for $0.7575 per common share in cash, american depositary shares are $3.03(one ADS equals four common shares) .

Sequans is valued at $249M. Although the company subsequently secured approvals in the US, UK, Taiwan and France, the terms of the offer have been repeatedly extended. It recently announced it would extend the 2024 until February 20.

At the same time, Jussas also announced that it had received a reply from the local tax bureau, saying that if the restructuring provided for in the basic agreement was implemented, is required to record and pay taxes on taxable income in accordance with article 66-6 of the Special Tax Measures Act of Japan. On February 15th Jussas received a 2024 ruling from the Tokyo local tax bureau on Japanese taxes. In light of this, Jussas exercised the right of termination under the underlying agreement and the offer was terminated.

Jussas said the termination would not have a material impact on Renesas' core strategy of pushing its technology into high-growth industries. Renesas continues to see significant opportunities in cellular internet of things technology and plans to build on that momentum through a partnership with Sequans.

Sequans was founded in 2003 to design and develop chips and modules for internet of things (IoT) devices. Sequans offers a wide range of 5G/4G cellular iot products, including 5G Nr, Cat 4, Cat 1, and LTE-M/NB-IoT, which provide reliable iot wireless connectivity without a gateway.

Renesas electronics is the result of a merger of once world-leading semiconductor brands Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and NEC, and thus has a strong integration“Gene” of its own. Since 2017, Renesas has embarked on a series of mergers and acquisitions.

In June, 2023 completed its acquisition of Austrian chip company Panthronics.

In October 2022, Renesas announced the completion of its acquisition of Steradian, an Indian supplier of 4D imaging radar solutions.

In July 2022, Renesas completed its acquisition of Reality AI, a supplier of embedded AI solutions.

In December, 2021 completed its acquisition of Celeno, a provider of Wi-Fi solutions.

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As can be seen, M & A has become an important tool for Renesas to rapidly expand its product range and consolidate its business area, in addition to its traditional strength of cars, renesas has developed industries, infrastructure, the Internet of things and other key areas through mergers and acquisitions. Despite the end of the acquisition of Sequans, Renesas's development plan, the racetrack acquisition will continue.

In addition, Renesas has acquired Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC (near field Communications) connectivity technology to strengthen its iot business through the acquisition of Dialog Semiconductor, Celeno Communications and Panthronics, although the deal with Sequans was cancelled.

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