Overclock.net banner

[Various] SanDisk In Buyout Talks With Western Digital (Updated Again)

3K views 41 replies 20 participants last post by  Mystriss 
#1 ·
Quote:
CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), default quality

Chipmaker Micron Technology Inc and hard disk drive maker Western Digital Corp are in talks with memory chip maker SanDisk Corp about a possible acquisition, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

SanDisk, valued at about $12.6 billion as of the stock's close on Tuesday, has hired a bank to help with the process, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

No decision has been made and the talks may not result in a transaction, Bloomberg reported.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/13/us-sandisk-m-a-micron-tech-idUSKCN0S72QL20151013

I think this would be a good move by WD, having an SSD company in their repertoire. WD purchased HGST and that turned out great for them. I imagine acquiring SanDisk would do the same for them.

Looks like this deal is moving along, as now they are in advanced talks about the acquisition taking place:
Quote:
It seems that Western Digital is in advanced talks with SanDisk regarding an acquisition. The two storage device makers could reach a deal pretty soon as well, with sources familiar with the matter claiming that everything could be official by the end of the week. Right now, Western Digital is said to be negotiating a price between $80 and $90 per share, though right now those details are private and as a result, the sources have been kept anonymous.

The initial report comes from Bloomberg, which also notes that no agreement has been signed yet, so talks could still fall apart, though negotiations gained pace over the weekend.

Western Digital is discussing a price of between $80 and $90 per SanDisk share, according to two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The company is leaning toward an all-cash offer, three people said. While no agreement has been signed and talks could still fall apart, negotiations accelerated over the weekend, the people said.
Source 1: http://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/matthew-wilson/western-digital-is-in-advanced-talks-to-buy-sandisk/
Source 2: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/sandisk-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-sell-to-western-digital

Looks like this is most likely going to happen:
Quote:
Western Digital has agreed to purchase Sandisk for $19 billion in cash and stock, a deal which values Sandisk at $86.50 per share and represents a 12% premium over yesterday's closing price. Current Western Digital CEO Steve Milligan will remain in charge of the company, which retains its headquarters in Irvine, California, while SanDisk's CEO Sanjay Mehrotra is expected to remain with Western Digital and join their board of directors.
Source 3:[/Bhttp://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Western-Digital-Buy-SanDisk-19-Billion


Quote:
Hard disk drive maker Western Digital (WDC) said it would buy memory chip maker SanDisk (SNDK) for about $19 billion, giving it better access to flash memory storage chips used in smartphones and mobile devices.
Source 4:[/Bhttp://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2015/10/21/western-digital-to-buy-sandisk-in-1b-deal/

Looks like the deal is "definitive"


Quote:
Western Digital Corporation and SanDisk Corporation today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Western Digital will acquire all of the outstanding shares of SanDisk for a combination of cash and stock. The offer values SanDisk common stock at $86.50 per share or a total equity value of approximately $19 billion, using a five-day volume weighted average price ending on October 20, 2015 of $79.60 per share of Western Digital common stock. If the previously announced investment in Western Digital by Unisplendour Corporation Limited closes prior to this acquisition, Western Digital will pay $85.10 per share in cash and 0.0176 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock; and if the Unisplendour transaction has not closed or has been terminated, $67.50 in cash and 0.2387 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies
Source 5:[/Bhttp://www.techpowerup.com/216898/western-digital-buying-sandisk-in-usd-19-billion-deal.html

Source 6:[/Bhttp://www.wdc.com/en/company/pressroom/releases/?release=e5f16023-3969-4cd0-bc3b-fe7e35572518
 
See less See more
#2 ·
It would be good only if WD completely reorganizes SanDisk and brings SanDisk's customer service up to WD's higher standards.
 
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald View Post

It would be good only if WD completely reorganizes SanDisk and brings SanDisk's customer service up to WD's higher standards.
Yes, I believe this would be crucial but as far as performance goes SanDisk is up there. They are often overlooked, and I imagine with "A Western Digital Company" underneath their name would help greatly improve sales.
 
#4 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BiG StroOnZ View Post

Yes, I believe this would be crucial but as far as performance goes SanDisk is up there. They are often overlooked, and I imagine with "A Western Digital Company" underneath their name would help greatly improve sales.
I see what you did there.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BiG StroOnZ View Post

I think this would be a good move by WD, having an SSD company in their repertoire. WD purchased HGST and that turned out great for them. I imagine acquiring SanDisk would do the same for them.
Eh, maybe. Seagate tried making some SSDs a while ago. I picked up my 240GB 600 November 2013. Don't regret it - it's a good drive - but they've never followed up with anything. Additionally, they purchased LSI of SandForce and every-server-RAID-controller-ever fame, but I have yet to see them do much with that.

Perhaps WD could try to push for their own hybrid drives? They did try with the Black2, but I'm almost certain sales were abysmal. It was very expensive for what it was, a 1TB WD Blue with a kinda crappy 120GB SSD taped on top. It only made sense for some very niche situations, and even then not very much sense when A) a single, larger SSD would have been the same price, B) Seagate's hybrid drives were available for less and C) Samsung's and Crucial's terabyte drives were available for more. (And as an aside, I bought a 960GB M500 for less than the Black2's $300 MSRP, though to be fair it was a refurb and only last month.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Omega X View Post

Why would a successful NAND maker suddenly want to sell off...
I believe they have a partnership with Toshiba and do not make their own NAND but rather assemble the end devices.

I could be wrong; please correct me if I am.
 
#9 ·
I have used a lot of SanDisk flash drives and ssd's over the years. They are cheap and cheap for a reason their flash drives are kinda slow and their ssd's are not the fastest. However their tech support is horrible so I think a buy out might be a good thing for consumers.
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ozlay View Post

I have used a lot of SanDisk flash drives and ssd's over the years. They are cheap and cheap for a reason their flash drives are kinda slow and their ssd's are not the fastest. However their tech support is horrible so I think a buy out might be a good thing for consumers.
They make blazzing fast SD cards and usb. Surely you got what you paid for.
There are many speed standard for flash memory.

I also used to get the cheapest flash storage solution but spending more is really worth it for a higher class.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by CynicalUnicorn View Post

Eh, maybe. Seagate tried making some SSDs a while ago. I picked up my 240GB 600 November 2013. Don't regret it - it's a good drive - but they've never followed up with anything. Additionally, they purchased LSI of SandForce and every-server-RAID-controller-ever fame, but I have yet to see them do much with that.

Perhaps WD could try to push for their own hybrid drives? They did try with the Black2, but I'm almost certain sales were abysmal. It was very expensive for what it was, a 1TB WD Blue with a kinda crappy 120GB SSD taped on top. It only made sense for some very niche situations, and even then not very much sense when A) a single, larger SSD would have been the same price, B) Seagate's hybrid drives were available for less and C) Samsung's and Crucial's terabyte drives were available for more. (And as an aside, I bought a 960GB M500 for less than the Black2's $300 MSRP, though to be fair it was a refurb and only last month.)
I don't think they should push for releasing SSD's under the WD name, I think they should do what they did with HGST where they just mention it is a Western Digital company. Revamp customer service, quality control, quality assurance, improve performance with various SKUs, etc. Then continue to release the SSDs under the SanDisk name (with the "A Western Digital Company" inclusion).

Maybe take the technology received from SanDisk and use that to release higher quality WD Hybrid drives, but as far as SSDs go I'm not sure they should release them under their own name. HGST has been doing so well and I'm not sure how much of that is attributed to WD acquiring them but man do they make some solid high capacity drives that have a long life span. I'm torn between my next backup/storage/extra games drive being a 4TB HGST or 4TB Blue because the HGST's are so nice.
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by CynicalUnicorn View Post

Yeah, it might not be a bad idea to keep them more or less autonomous but bring them under the WD "family." SanDisk is pretty well-known, I'd say, so it would be a huge misstep to ditch that label. That doesn't mean they can't release WD-branded SSDs however.
Maybe WD trying a 120GB, 240GB, or 480GB SSD might not be a bad idea but it would have to be based off of SanDisks top of the line SSDs which I believe are the Ultra II or Extreme Pro. The Ultra II have pretty good price to performance but the Extreme Pro not so much, so WD would have to improve on that in order to make people switch to it (when using re-branded models). Having "A WD Company" included in the SanDisk name would help boost sales but they would need to give people incentive to go with those choices over say a Samsung or Crucial drive because right now they are killing it with price to performance SSDs. Even more so with WD utilizing one of SanDisks' faster drives as a re-brand because you just cant sell a 240/250GB SSD for $120 anymore (What the Extreme Pro is priced at).
 
#15 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BiG StroOnZ View Post

Maybe WD trying a 120GB, 240GB, or 480GB SSD might not be a bad idea but it would have to be based off of SanDisks top of the line SSDs which I believe are the Ultra II or Extreme Pro. The Ultra II have pretty good price to performance but the Extreme Pro not so much, so WD would have to improve on that in order to make people switch to it (when using re-branded models). Having "A WD Company" included in the SanDisk name would help boost sales but they would need to give people incentive to go with those choices over say a Samsung or Crucial drive because right now they are killing it with price to performance SSDs. Even more so with WD utilizing one of SanDisks' faster drives as a re-brand because you just cant sell a 240/250GB SSD for $120 anymore (What the Extreme Pro is priced at).
Hybrid drives are seeming to get a lot of attention.
 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpeedyVT View Post

Hybrid drives are seeming to get a lot of attention.
Problem is most of them don't have enough NAND flash to make them worthwhile, so it is usually just better to go with a WD Black or a WD Blue because they will end up being faster in the end. That's at least if you plan on using the drive for more than just storage wherein you plan to access it quite often. WD released a 4TB Blue recently that seems to have decent reviews, however again it only has 140-150 MB/s read and writes. Mostly likely because it is a 5400rpm drive coupled with 8GB of NAND. Kind of disappointing when 4TB Black can do almost 50 MB/s more read/write.

It seems these Hybrid drives tend to speed up quite a bit when you frequently access them because of caching but sequential performance is still pretty lackluster because they still seem to pair the NAND with a 5400 rpm drive.

I would like to see Hybrid drives with larger NAND capacities personally and faster HDDs, the WD Black² was a step in the right direction but it carried a plenitude of issues along with it (Windows seeing the SSD and HDD as separate, along with the HDD failing but the SSD working). Maybe if WD acquired SanDisk it would help propel them in the right direction to where Hybrid drives should go.
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpeedyVT View Post

Buyout Western Digital! HA HA! SanDisk itself would be too expensive 12 billion dollar company, a 22 billion dollar company, 19 billion for micron's. I just can't see either of them buying each other. I can see mergers or partnerships.
Dell, a $25 billions company just bought out EMC for $67 billions so yeah you clearly have no clue how acquisitions work. WD and Micron can very well buy SanDisk out. They'd just have to levy funds to do it, whether through debt financing or through equity.
 
#18 ·
Looks like this deal is moving along, as now they are in advanced talks about the acquisition taking place:
Quote:
It seems that Western Digital is in advanced talks with SanDisk regarding an acquisition. The two storage device makers could reach a deal pretty soon as well, with sources familiar with the matter claiming that everything could be official by the end of the week. Right now, Western Digital is said to be negotiating a price between $80 and $90 per share, though right now those details are private and as a result, the sources have been kept anonymous.

The initial report comes from Bloomberg, which also notes that no agreement has been signed yet, so talks could still fall apart, though negotiations gained pace over the weekend.

Western Digital is discussing a price of between $80 and $90 per SanDisk share, according to two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The company is leaning toward an all-cash offer, three people said. While no agreement has been signed and talks could still fall apart, negotiations accelerated over the weekend, the people said.
Source 1: http://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/matthew-wilson/western-digital-is-in-advanced-talks-to-buy-sandisk/
Source 2: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/sandisk-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-sell-to-western-digital
 
#19 ·
Was it the WD or the Seagate CEO that claimed SSDs were basically no threat and never going to challenge HDDs?
 
#21 ·
This would be a good move for WD. Their Black drives are getting uncompetitive against even entry level SSD. Their Black2 drive didn't do too well either. Maybe with SanDisk's technology and patents they can do better.
 
  • Rep+
Reactions: BiG StroOnZ
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by awdrifter View Post

This would be a good move for WD. Their Black drives are getting uncompetitive against even entry level SSD. Their Black2 drive didn't do too well either. Maybe with SanDisk's technology and patents they can do better.
Comparing the WD Blacks to SSDs is like comparing pumpkins to kumquats. Good 7200rpm HDDs, like the Blacks, still reign as being the most cost effective medium for mass storage. For storage, the speed of a SSD is normally not needed.
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BiG StroOnZ View Post

Problem is most of them don't have enough NAND flash to make them worthwhile, so it is usually just better to go with a WD Black or a WD Blue because they will end up being faster in the end. That's at least if you plan on using the drive for more than just storage wherein you plan to access it quite often. WD released a 4TB Blue recently that seems to have decent reviews, however again it only has 140-150 MB/s read and writes. Mostly likely because it is a 5400rpm drive coupled with 8GB of NAND. Kind of disappointing when 4TB Black can do almost 50 MB/s more read/write.

It seems these Hybrid drives tend to speed up quite a bit when you frequently access them because of caching but sequential performance is still pretty lackluster because they still seem to pair the NAND with a 5400 rpm drive.

I would like to see Hybrid drives with larger NAND capacities personally and faster HDDs, the WD Black² was a step in the right direction but it carried a plenitude of issues along with it (Windows seeing the SSD and HDD as separate, along with the HDD failing but the SSD working). Maybe if WD acquired SanDisk it would help propel them in the right direction to where Hybrid drives should go.
Maybe They can create a hybrid drive with more than freaking 8 GB of NAND. Maybe they can have 32 GB NAND with a 1 TB platter.

WELL I CAN DREAM CAN'T I?!
 
#24 ·
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thready View Post

Maybe They can create a hybrid drive with more than freaking 8 GB of NAND. Maybe they can have 32 GB NAND with a 1 TB platter.

WELL I CAN DREAM CAN'T I?!
I hope so, I think this might happen if WD acquires Sandisk. How about a Velociraptor 10k rpm drive with 120gb of NAND.
biggrin.gif

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald View Post

It looks like the deal has pretty much happened. http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2015/10/21/western-digital-to-buy-sandisk-in-1b-deal/
Yup definitely looks like it is a go:
Quote:
Western Digital has agreed to purchase Sandisk for $19 billion in cash and stock, a deal which values Sandisk at $86.50 per share and represents a 12% premium over yesterday's closing price. Current Western Digital CEO Steve Milligan will remain in charge of the company, which retains its headquarters in Irvine, California, while SanDisk's CEO Sanjay Mehrotra is expected to remain with Western Digital and join their board of directors.
http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Western-Digital-Buy-SanDisk-19-Billion

Updated OP

Directly from WD:
Quote:
IRVINE, Calif. and MILPITAS, Calif. - Oct. 21, 2015 - Western Digital® Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) and SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Western Digital will acquire all of the outstanding shares of SanDisk for a combination of cash and stock. The offer values SanDisk common stock at $86.50 per share or a total equity value of approximately $19 billion, using a five-day volume weighted average price ending on October 20, 2015 of $79.60 per share of Western Digital common stock. If the previously announced investment in Western Digital by Unisplendour Corporation Limited closes prior to this acquisition, Western Digital will pay $85.10 per share in cash and 0.0176 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock; and if the Unisplendour transaction has not closed or has been terminated, $67.50 in cash and 0.2387 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
http://www.wdc.com/en/company/pressroom/releases/?release=e5f16023-3969-4cd0-bc3b-fe7e35572518
 
#26 ·
What is the difference though between the idea of a 32GB cache and doing that whole 128GB+1TB dual drive that was sold a while back? I mean it doesn't seem like it would be of that much benefit.

Should have bought SanDisk stock when WD teamed up with them back in 2013 I guess.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top