Hard disks: Seagate wants to buy up important supplier
Seagate wants to take over Intevac, which manufactures important coating equipment. Western Digital and Toshiba also use its machines.
(Image: heise online / mma)
Among hard disk drive manufacturers, a streamlining of the supply chain is on the cards. Seagate wants to take over the supplier Intevac by April 2025. Although the deal involves a modest sum of 119 million US dollars, the project will have an impact on the entire HDD market. This is because Western Digital also buys production equipment directly from Intevac. Toshiba is indirectly one of Intevac's customers via the disk manufacturer Resonac (formerly Showa Denko), as Blocks & Files notes.
Intevac manufactures machines for the so-called sputtering process for coating hard disk platters. The disks are placed in a vacuum chamber together with a block for the desired coating material –, such as a cobalt alloy –. The latter is bombarded with ions. The latter is bombarded with ions, causing individual atoms to sputter and adhere to the disks.
The resulting coatings are a few nanometers to micrometers thin, depending on the type. They are needed, for example, to magnetize the discs or as a protective layer. An Intevac 200 Lean machine coats 950 disks per hour. Seagate's demand for sputtering machines is increasing with the switch to HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology to increase capacity.
(Image:Â Intevac)
Share price shoots up
Seagate and the Intevac Board of Directors have agreed on a purchase price of 4.052 US dollars per outstanding share. Together with a final planned dividend payment of 5 US cents per share, this amounts to 119 million US dollars.
The antitrust authorities still have to approve the takeover. Western Digital and Toshiba in particular could raise objections. If the authorities give the green light, enough shareholders must sell at least two thirds of the outstanding shares. The two largest investors have already expressed their approval.
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Before the takeover plan was announced, one Intevac share was worth 3.38 US dollars. Since then, it has shot up by 17 percent to 4 US dollars – roughly the value that Seagate wants to pay.
As early as December 11, 2024, the Intevac board announced a change in strategy with the aim of being bought out. Previously, an attempt to expand into glass coating, including in partnership with the company Corning, failed.
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