{"id":15804,"date":"2012-06-19T00:33:34","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T22:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=15804"},"modified":"2012-06-19T10:50:53","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T08:50:53","slug":"intel-buys-375m-worth-of-interdigital-patents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/hardware\/15804\/intel-buys-375m-worth-of-interdigital-patents\/","title":{"rendered":"Intel buys $375m-worth of InterDigital patents"},"content":{"rendered":"

InterDigital Inc said on Monday it had agreed to sell to Intel Corp<\/a> about 1,700 wireless technology patents for $375 million, sending InterDigital shares up 27 percent.<\/p>\n

While Intel is pushing to expand its chip business beyond computers and into mobile devices, InterDigital for about a year has been seeking to capitalize on a surge in interest in wireless patents.<\/p>\n

InterDigital investors applauded the deal on Monday after some had questioned the company’s ability to finalize a patent sale after the company said in January that it had failed to find a buyer for the whole company but would keep looking for buyers for its patent portfolio.<\/p>\n

In July 2011, InterDigital said it was looking into a possible sale of the company or its patents in the hope that other big patent deals would boost its value.<\/p>\n

“This should reduce some of the executional overhang that was on the stock. The market was worried they wouldn’t meet this milestone,” said M Partners analyst Ron Shuttleworth. “They lost a lot of credibility once they had to cancel the process.”<\/p>\n

However, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said that the $220,000 price per patent that Intel agreed to pay appeared to be much lower than previously announced patent deals.<\/p>\n

In comparison, Rasgon cited Nortel’s $4.5 billion patent sale last year that fetched $750,000 per patent and Google Inc’s<\/a> recent $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility<\/a>, which implies a price of more than $735,000 per patent assuming a zero valuation for its cellphone hardware business.<\/p>\n

Rasgon said that the deal should fit well with Intel’s mobile strategy.<\/p>\n

“While we believe these new patents acquired from Interdigital should further bolster their position, we do not expect any changes to their wireless strategy as a result of the purchase,” Rasgon said in a research note.<\/p>\n

InterDigital also announced on Monday that its board had authorized a doubling of its share buyback authorization to $200 million from $100 million. It also said it was sticking by its revenue target of $71 million for the second quarter, including the sale of other patents for $9 million in a separate deal.<\/p>\n

The companies expect the deal to close in the third quarter.<\/p>\n

Evercore Partners acted as InterDigital financial adviser and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich 7 Rosati acted as legal counsel.<\/p>\n

InterDigital shares were up $6.36 to $29.24 in afternoon trade on Nasdaq. Intel shares, also on Nasdaq, rose 16 cents to $27.50.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Intel looks at a more connected world<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Intel, Samsung, TSMC in chip-making race<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft, Intel bet big on Windows 8<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

InterDigital Inc said on Monday it had agreed to sell to Intel Corp about 1,700 wireless technology patents for $375 million, sending InterDigital shares up 27 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[185,25,305,995,365],"class_list":["post-15804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-acquisition","tag-active","tag-intel","tag-interdigital","tag-patents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15804"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15840,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804\/revisions\/15840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}