Second Payment Completed
Ownership of NAND IP, Production Facilities, and Personnel Secured
Control Over Dalian Plant in China Expanded
Kwak Nojeong: "Specific Operational Strategies to Be Finalized"
SK Hynix has completed the acquisition of Intel's NAND business unit, laying the foundation to accelerate its enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) business. Having received full control of the NAND business from Intel, the company is expected to soon establish concrete operational strategies.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure system on the 28th, SK Hynix announced that "the transaction has been completed as the second closing payment and business transfer have been finalized" regarding the acquisition of Intel's NAND business unit.
Earlier, in October 2020, SK Hynix signed the acquisition contract for Intel's NAND business unit under a strategy to diversify the company's business structure, which had been focused on DRAM. The total acquisition amount, divided into two phases?Phase 1 ($6.61 billion) and Phase 2 ($2.24 billion)?is $8.844 billion, making it the largest domestic merger and acquisition (M&A) deal in South Korea's history.
With the completion of the transaction on this day, SK Hynix has finally acquired the legal ownership of Intel's NAND design assets (IP), research and development (R&D), production facilities, and personnel. At the end of 2021, when the first phase of the acquisition was completed, SK Hynix took over Intel's Dalian manufacturing plant in China and the SSD business division. In December of the same year, the SSD business division was newly launched as SK Hynix's U.S. subsidiary, Solidigm.
Having secured control over the core assets previously held by Intel, SK Hynix plans to establish detailed strategies and operations for the NAND business.
At the regular shareholders' meeting on the 27th, SK Hynix President Kwak No-jeong responded to a shareholder question regarding the "operational plan for Intel's China factory," stating, "Regarding the Dalian fab in China, we plan to complete the second closing within this month and finalize specific operational strategies. After fully acquiring those (Intel's) assets, there will be opportunities to further supplement the existing strategies."
He added, "The China fab is a major production facility for the company and is quite important in terms of responding to global memory demand. We intend to prioritize customer response within the scope of U.S. government regulations and continue operating the China fab."
SK Hynix plans to proactively prepare next-generation products for AI data centers, such as enterprise SSDs supporting high bandwidth and ultra-high capacity, as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors continues this year. The enterprise SSD market is expected to grow 3.5 times compared to 2023.
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