OCZ Technology [NASADQ:OCZ], the troubled SSD and PSU manufacturer has since filing Chapter 11, announced that they will be selling their remaining assets to Toshiba for $35 million. As part of the agreement, Toshiba has agreed to supply OCZ with the necessary financing to satisfy OCZ’s debtors and to give them the flash supply necessary in order to keep producing products until the closure of the acquisition, pending approval from the bankruptcy court. They will also continue to support their customers and to make sure that no customer is felt left behind as a result of today’s announcement.
Upon acquisition, Toshiba will gain access to OCZ’s proprietary controllers, firmware and software as well as the human capital behind these products. They will also take their brand and sales channels, giving Toshiba even broader sales channels to sell through. Toshiba states that this opportunity gives the two companies the opportunity to bring controller IP and NAND supply under one roof, enabling faster, more reliable products for both OCZ and Toshiba’s customers. OCZ’s board of directors have already approved the deal and the sale is expected to close in the next 60 days.
From what it looks like, Toshiba is not interested in evaporating the OCZ brand and dismantling the company. It looks like they want to keep OCZ alive and simply utilize their expertise. Toshiba is one of the biggest NAND manufacturers in the world and one of OCZ’s biggest problems has been the lack of NAND supply once they evaporated their stockpile (thanks to Ryan Petersen). Judging by the $35 million price, Toshiba was doing exactly what we said they would do when the first rumors of the Toshiba acquisition began. They wanted to wait and let the price to continue to fall until they got the price they wanted. Sure, this deal has been going on for quite some time, but the announcement wasn’t actually made until OCZ filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Right now, OCZ’s stock is an absolute rollercoaster with the stock going up 130% in trading today and then down another 42% in after hours trading once the announcement had been made. Clearly, OCZ did eventually get acquired by a bigger company looking to expand, it just happened when the company was worth a fraction of what it was at its peak. While this press release doesn’t detail what will happen to the sales and marketing staff at OCZ, it seems like much of the engineering staff will stay, which is at least some encouraging news for the people at OCZ. It will be interesting to see what Toshiba does next year with OCZ’s IP under their belt. I sense that we will have a battle between Samsung, Micron, Toshiba, SanDisk and Intel, because right now the SSD market is almost entirely consolidated.
Original Author: Anshel Sag
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