OCZ Technology has risen fast on the storage market with its work in solid state technology. During Thursday the company stock soared 21 percent after rumors had been published that harddrive maker Seagate has made an offer on the company.
The story started at rumor mill and blogger Fudzilla, and was quickly caught up by the stock market and also independent analysts claim to have heard similar rumors. Seagate has according to the rumor given OCZ Technology a solid offer and a deal could be closed next week already. According to sources to Fudzilla not only Seagate is interested in OCZ, but also memory maker Micron Technology Group has shown interest.
“I’m hearing the same rumors … I can only say that after the last quarter, when OCZ’s cash situation became more challenging, they would be more willing to enter into a deal,” – Shebly Seyrafi, analyst at FBN Securities.
OCZ has been one of the leading actors on the SSD market over the last few years, but has been broadening with lots of retail solutions lately. Its increased presence in the business channel is of interest to Seagate, which shares the harddrive market with competitor Western Digital more or less, was late to the SSD party.
A bid far above the market value of OCZ
OCZ acquired controller maker Indilinx for 32 million dollar in May of last year, and was valued to 308 million dollar on Nasdaq on Wednesday. During Thursday the stock rose 22 percent, which gave the total value a big boost. Industry sources says Seagate, valued at 11.71 billion dollar, has made an offer far above OCZ’s current stock value. Seagate are not new to buying competitors or interesting companies in adjacent markets, I.e. Maxtor and Samsung Storage, but also LaCie.
Neither Seagate ir OCZ have commented on the stories.
