Tech Roundup: SanDisk Shares Rise, LSI Announces Plan to Acquire Sandforce

Milpitas-based SanDisk Corp. had favorable news to share with the business world this week. Though the PC industry may be rocky, Bloomberg BusinessWeek is reporting that the rise of devices like smartphones and tablets is helping the computer memory industry surge. SanDisk, a leading provider of memory chips, experienced a rise in shares last Friday, Oct. 21, after posting higher-than-expected third-quarter earnings and predicting a “favorable” outlook for 2012. Shares rose $3.92, or 8.6 percent, to $49.42. In light of this news, the company also announced Thursday that its Board of Directors approved a program authorizing the repurchase of up to $500 million of the company's common stock over a period of up to five years.

Milpitas-based LSI Corp. announced this week it is finalizing an agreement to acquire Sandforce, Inc., the leading provider of flash storage processors for enterprise and client flash solutions and solid state drives (SSDs). Under the agreement, LSI will pay approximately $322 million in cash, net of cash assumed, and assume approximately $48 million of unvested stock options and restricted shares held by SandForce employees. LSI representatives said they expect the acquisition will help extend the company’s “industry-leading position” and breadth in storage technology solutions. At the same time, LSI released its third-quarter financial results this week, which were positive. Revenues were up 9 percent quarter over quarter, and 21 percent year over year, due to increased sales of the company’s storage and networking chips.

ABBYY, a leading provider of document recognition, data capture and linguistic technologies and professional services, announced Thursday it has joined the Google Enterprise Partner program, which aims to extend the power of Google technologies across the enterprise and helps customers get more value out of their Google enterprise deployments. ABBYY started in Russia and has offices all over the world, including in Milpitas. Steve Kincade, vice-president of channels in North America, said, "Organizations leveraging document recognition solutions quickly realize that digitizing their documents is only half the battle. Our work with Google allows ABBYY USA to provide organizations with a single solution that simplifies the management, organization and locating of documents. With this technology integration, ABBYY solutions are making the dream of a digital workplace a reality."

Milpitas-based Intersil Corp. released its third-quarter financial results this week. Net revenue for the third quarter was $186.8 million, a 14.7 percent decrease from $219.1 million in the third quarter of 2010, and a 10.7 percent decrease from $209.1 million in the second quarter of 2011. President and CEO Dave Bell cited lower-than-expected demand as the reason for the decrease in revenues. The Board of Directors announced a quarterly dividend of 12 cents per share of common stock will be paid out in November.

Milpitas-based KLA-Tencor also released its results for its first quarter of the 2012 financial year, ending Sept. 30, 2011. Revenues were $796 million, which were down nearly $100 million from the previous quarter, but were up significantly from the first quarter of 2011, during which revenues totaled $682 million. Earnings per diluted share of stock will be $1.17, down from $1.50 last quarter, but up from 99 cents in the first quarter of 2011.