Back in February 2007, Transmeta announced it would drop its processor manufacturing and instead focus on licensing its technology, something it did to companies like NVIDIA, Intel and AMD. After revising the company activity over the last couple of month and its strategic choices it has now started to look for a buyer. “A way to enhance value for all its stockholders” as Transmeta puts it in the press release.
“We are very pleased to have achieved the two agreements with Intel,” said Les Crudele, president and CEO of Transmeta. “Receiving these one-time payments strengthens our balance sheet and allows potential buyers to more accurately evaluate our Company. This year, as a result of our successful licensing activities, we will collect at least $265 million of cash payments for our intellectual property and patents. We expect that our intellectual property portfolio and licensing business, combined with our solid balance sheet, will be attractive to potential bidders, and we look forward to conducting a timely process to maximize value for our stockholders. As we proceed with the process, we remain focused on working with potential licensees, as well as developing and validating our IP blocks so that we can broaden our target market.”
It also announced a change in the deal it struck with Intel at the end of 2007 after a patent struggle. Instead of the $250 million in small consecutive payments, Transmeta will instead receive a one-time nonrefundable sum of $91.5 million. It also struck a second deal. An agreement between the two that covers nonexclusive technology and will provide Intel with proprietary Transmeta computing technologies. Whether Intel would be interested to go even further is something the future will have to reveal, but if not Transmeta will just have to find another buyer.
