If anyone wants to buy a second hand chipmaker, Freescale has indicated that it might be selling itself off.
According to the New York Post, Freescale has hired investment bankers to explore a possible sale, and it has an unnamed buyer in mind.
It is pretty likely to be Samsung as this has been rumoured for a while. Freescale makes chips used in automobiles, consumer products, telecommunications infrastructure and industrial equipment and this is an area Samsung wants to expand into. Samsung Electronics has $63 billion in cash which could be spent on acquisitions,
Of course no one is saying anything at the moment and it is unlikely to be confirmed for a while.
Freescale went public in 2011 after being taken private in 2006 for $17.6 billion in a leveraged buyout by a group of private equity firms that included Blackstone, Carlyle and TPG Capital.
On January 27, the company reported strong results for the fourth quarter — with revenue up 11 percent and increased margins — as well as a forecast for the current quarter that exceeded Wall Street expectations. Since then, Freescale shares have jumped 32 percent.
