Qualcomm Acquires AMD's Handheld Business

Qualcomm has acquired certain graphics and multimedia technology assets, intellectual property and resources that were formerly AMD’s handheld business.

The acquisition is expect to enhance Qualcomm’s multimedia capabilities.

“This acquisition of assets from AMD’s handheld business brings us strong multimedia technologies, including graphics cores that we have been licensing for several years,” said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “Bringing this technology in-house creates even greater synergy as we seamlessly integrate the best-in-class multimedia performance AMD offers into our system-on-chip (SoC) products.”

The two companies signed and closed a binding agreement on January 19, 2009, having already received required regulatory approvals. Cash consideration from Qualcomm to AMD, as part of the transaction, is $65 million, subject to adjustments for employee-related expenses and a holdback for certain customary indemnification obligations. Both AMD and Qualcomm are committed to a seamless transfer of business assets, as well as a smooth transition for employees.

Qualcomm expects the acquisition to be approximately $0.02 dilutive to pro forma earnings per share in fiscal 2009 and accretive to earnings by the second half of calendar year 2010.