Alphawave agrees £1.8bn takeover by America's Qualcomm
Qualcomm is offering to pay 183p per share in cash for London-listed Alphawave, which is a near-96% premium to its closing price before the takeover interest was revealed.
But Qualcomm has also put forward an alternative share offer to Alphawave investors, which would see them receive Qualcomm stock instead of cash.
The £1.8 billion price is less than half the £3.1 billion value at which Toronto-headquartered Alphawave floated when it listed just over four years ago.
It also sees the London market lose yet another listing after a recent flurry of firms defecting from the City for rival exchanges overseas and a number of firms being bought out.
Tony Pialis, president and chief executive of Alphawave, said: 'Qualcomm's acquisition of Alphawave represents a significant milestone for us and an opportunity for our business to join forces with a respected industry leader and drive value to our customers.
'Together, we will unlock new opportunities for growth, drive innovation, and create a leading player in artificial intelligence (AI) compute and connectivity solutions.'
For Qualcomm, the acquisition is seen boosting its capabilities in AI infrastructure by expanding its intellectual property portfolio in data centre and 5G networking.
As well as data centres, Alphawave technology is used in 5G infrastructure and autonomous vehicles.
Cristiano Amon, president and chief executive of Qualcomm, said: 'The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high-growth areas, including data centre infrastructure.'
The deal is expected to complete in the first three months of 2026.
Alphawave, which listed in London in May 2021, has around 830 employees across operations in Canada, the UK, Europe and Korea.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
High Court hears company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone must pay back £121m for ‘faulty' PPE
A company linked to Tory peer Michelle Mone should pay back more than £121 million for breaching a Government contract for 25 million surgical gowns during the coronavirus pandemic, the High Court has heard. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is suing PPE Medpro for allegedly breaching a deal for the gowns, with lawyers for the Government telling the court they were 'faulty' because they were not sterile. The company, a consortium led by Baroness Mone's husband, businessman Doug Barrowman, was awarded Government contracts by the former Conservative administration to supply PPE during the pandemic, after she recommended it to ministers. Both have denied wrongdoing. The Government is seeking to recover the costs of the contract, as well as the costs of transporting and storing the items, which amount to an additional £8,648,691. PPE Medpro said it 'categorically denies' breaching the contract, and its lawyers claimed the company has been 'singled out for unfair treatment'. Opening the trial on Wednesday, Paul Stanley KC, for the DHSC, said: 'This case is simply about whether 25 million surgical gowns provided by PPE Medpro were faulty. 'It is, in short, a technical case about detailed legal and industry standards that apply to sterile gowns.' Mr Stanley said in written submissions the 'initial contact with Medpro came through Baroness Mone', with discussions about the contract then going through one of the company's directors, Anthony Page. Baroness Mone remained 'active throughout' the negotiations, Mr Stanley said, with the peer stating Mr Barrowman had 'years of experience in manufacturing, procurement and management of supply chains'. But he told the court Baroness Mone's communications were 'not part of this case', which was 'simply about compliance'. He said: 'The department does not allege anything improper happened, and we are not concerned with any profits made by anybody.' In court documents from May this year, the DHSC said the gowns were delivered to the UK in 72 lots between August and October 2020, with £121,999,219.20 paid to PPE Medpro between July and August that year. The department rejected the gowns in December 2020 and told the company it would have to repay the money, but this has not happened and the gowns remain in storage, unable to be used. In written submissions for trial, Mr Stanley said 99.9999% of the gowns should have been sterile under the terms of the contract, equating to one in a million being unusable. The DHSC claims the contract also specified PPE Medpro had to sterilise the gowns using a 'validated process', attested by CE marking, which indicates a product has met certain medical standards. He said 'none of those things happened', with no validated sterilisation process being followed, and the gowns supplied with invalid CE marking. He continued that 140 gowns were later tested for sterility, with 103 failing. He said: 'Whatever was done to sterilise the gowns had not achieved its purpose, because more than one in a million of them was contaminated when delivered. 'On that basis, DHSC was entitled to reject the gowns, or is entitled to damages, which amount to the full price and storage costs.' In his written submissions, Charles Samek KC, for PPE Medpro, said the 'only plausible reason' for the gowns becoming contaminated was due to 'the transport and storage conditions or events to which the gowns were subject', after they had been delivered to the DHSC. He added the testing did not happen until several months after the gowns were rejected, and the samples selected were not 'representative of the whole population', meaning 'no proper conclusions may be drawn'. He said the DHSC's claim was 'contrived and opportunistic' and PPE Medpro had been 'made the 'fall guy' for a catalogue of failures and errors' by the department. He said: 'It has perhaps been singled out because of the high profiles of those said to be associated with PPE Medpro, and/or because it is perceived to be a supplier with financial resources behind it. 'In reality, an archetypal case of 'buyer's remorse', where DHSC simply seeks to get out of a bargain it wished it never entered into, left, as it is, with over £8 billion of purchased and unused PPE as a result of an untrammelled and uncontrolled buying spree with taxpayers' money.' He also said there was a 'delicious irony' that Baroness Mone was mentioned in the DHSC's written submissions, when she had 'zero relevance to the contractual issues in this case'. Neither Baroness Mone nor Mr Barrowman is due to give evidence in the trial, and Baroness Mone did not attend the first day of the hearing on Wednesday. A PPE Medpro spokesperson said the company 'categorically denies breaching its obligations' and will 'robustly defend' the claim. The trial before Mrs Justice Cockerill is due to last five weeks, with a judgment expected in writing at a later date.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Palace co-owner John Textor would sell shares for Europa League chance
Crystal Palace co-owner John Textor is willing to sell his shares in the club in order to ensure the Eagles can enter next season's Europa League, according to reports. The American, whose Eagle Football Group owns 43 per cent of Palace, has imperilled the club's chance of a first-ever European campaign owing to his involvement with Ligue 1 side Lyon, but is ready to offload his stake to his fellow co-owners in order to bring the saga to an end. UEFA does not allow clubs with the same ownership to compete in the same European competitions in a season. As well as his stake in Palace, the 59-year-old has a controlling stake in the French club, also via Eagle Football. However it is also reported that the European governing body does not consider Textor's influence at Selhurst Park to be decisive and is leaning towards allowing the club into the Europa League regardless. The PA news agency understands no formal decision is likely on Palace's fate until the end of June. Textor has previously spoken of his frustration at how little influence his stake entitles him to, over football matters. Victory for Oliver Glasner's side over Manchester City in last month's FA Cup final gave them their first major trophy and with it a first crack at Europe. However, Nottingham Forest have since written to UEFA to challenge Palace's Europa League spot and in the hope of taking their place. Forest's owner Evangelos Marinakis, who also owns Greek side Olympiacos, placed his shares in the club in a blind trust before the governing body's March 1 deadline, anticipating Nuno Espirito Santo's side's European qualification. At present Forest, who finished seventh in last season's Premier League, are set to enter the Conference League but would take Palace's Europa League place, should they be deemed ineligible.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
KKR threat to NHS landlord: Don't give the barbarians a foothold in a sacred public service, says ALEX BRUMMER
Freed from the proposed £4billion rescue of Thames Water, private equity barons KKR have come fizzing back with an upgraded offer for NHS and private healthcare landlords Assura. KKR's latest and final bid of £1.7billion is only marginally better than that from listed rival Primary Health Properties (PHP) but is being recommended by Assura's board. The battle isn't necessarily over, with PHP still looking at options and claiming Chancellor Rachel Reeves's bonanza spending on the NHS as an ally. As has become customary when listed companies seek to vanish from the London stock market, there is extensive waffle from Assura about careful evaluation and fiduciary duty. The latter is investment banker-speak for running up the white flag. In cash terms, the KKR offer, at 52.1p a share, is barely better than the 51.7p bid from PHP. A 39 per cent premium may seem wonderful but given the depressed state of share valuations in London and a recent tech offer with a 96 per cent premium, the KKR deal is hardly effervescent. There is no obligation for Assura to accept either deal. A braver board would have told the private equity plunderers to get lost. Instead, it chose to disparage the alternative 'merger' with PHP, claiming financial and execution risk. The board also argues that the PHP offer would diminish Assura's efforts to support investment in the NHS estate. Who is Assura kidding? KKR fears too much exposure to regulated British assets and the political risk which comes with it as we learned when it pulled out of the near-complete Thames Water deal. Assura also needs to remind itself of how private equity works. Load up target companies with debt, squeeze costs, do some clever financial engineering with the leverage, raise prices or rents and head for the hills. A Government which better understood how highly indebted deals work might be cautious. A reading of the Competition & Markets Authority's work on veterinary services, revealing how the cost to pet owners and farmers has escalated, illustrates the dangers. More market-based private medicine in the UK eases pressure on the NHS. But allowing the barbarians a foothold in a sacred service is unacceptable even if it's wrapped up with tinsel and a bow. Sign of the Zodiac This week's pandemic of bids for Britain's tech crown jewels and skin care specialists rightly has been accompanied by much handwringing. How is it that companies born and bred in UK science and tech struggle to develop into national champions? After all, the City is second only to New York as a financial centre and is home to one of the world's biggest collection of banks and a strong venture capital industry. There ought to be no bars to start-ups or smaller listed firms accessing capital. Freeing up pension funds, allowing them to be more adventurous, ought to help. But swift market access to funding and liquidity is the key. That is why the launch of Pisces, the London Stock Exchange's platform for 'intermittent' capital, a place to come to raise funding and then vanish behind a privacy wall, is an important innovation. Stock exchange group boss David Schwimmer has been promoting the concept for years but freeing it from the weeds of regulatory bureaucracy is not easy. The insistence on broad-based disclosure rules threatened to sideline it. So it is good to learn that the Financial Conduct Authority, in keeping with the growth agenda, has dropped onerous transparency requirements on the environment, shareholder transactions and director pay. These threatened to strangle Pisces at birth. Let the fundraising begin before the rush to the door of UK tech and AI becomes a stampede. Peer pressure It has become something of a thing for Chancellors to name-check colleagues when delivering grand financial statements to the Commons. Rachel Reeves set a record with her pledges to spend, spend, spend in Labour constituencies in the North, Midlands, Scotland and Wales. Lonely Weymouth was the only southern town to receive much of a mention. Unlike Southport, it already has a serviceable pier.
