Apple is considering the purchase of the semiconductor business of Toshiba, said on Wednesday The Financial Times. Amid these rumors, shares of the Japanese conglomerate, which is preparing to restart the procedure for the sale of their business for the production of memory chips, rose 13%.
The successful sale of the business is to help Toshiba to restore financial health, which has suffered greatly after the scandal with the overstatement in reporting in 2015 and the recent write-off of losses of $6.3 billion in the American division of occupied nuclear energy.
According to sources, the list of potential investors includes TSMC, Microsoft and even Apple. Among other investigators include SK Hynix, Foxconn, the investment Fund Silver Lake, Micron Technology and investment Fund Bain Capital. According to the source, TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, plans to expand the partnership with Toshiba, investing in its semiconductor division.
According to analysts, business Toshiba can cost up to 2 trillion yen ($17.6 billion). Earlier, Reuters, citing informed sources reported that Japanese Corporation expects to receive at least 1 trillion yen ($8.8 billion) from the sale of a controlling stake of a unit for the production of chips flash memory. It was noted that Toshiba has not yet decided on the size of stake for sale, but wants to retain a third unit.
At the moment, Toshiba is the second largest producer of flash-memory of type NAND, so the interest in the business from the big players is understandable. Although the purchase of this business Apple is still hard to believe, as the iPhone maker prefers not to have its own production capacity.
Against the background of excessive interest in the asset Toshiba conglomerate stocks rose in price by 13.1%.
