Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Seagate completes acquisition of xyratex

Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) has announced it has completed its previously announced acquisition of Xyratex Ltd (NASDAQ: XRTX), a leading provider of data storage technology.

“Exabyte growth is accelerating, and we are building higher capacity drives to address this growth,” said Dave Mosley, President of Operations and Technology at Seagate.  “The time required to properly test these higher capacity drives is increasing dramatically, making it strategically important to have uninterrupted access to world-class test equipment and engineering resources.  The addition of Xyratex helps us fill this important need and considerably streamlines Seagate’s supply and manufacturing chains for our core HDD business.”

Jamie Lerner, President of Cloud Systems and Solutions at Seagate, said, “We are very excited to add Xyratex’s storage systems and high-performance computing businesses to our core offerings.  This will enable Seagate to provide added value to our customers through a broader array of storage solutions, which is particularly important as exabyte growth continues and as cloud-based business models proliferate. We look forward to coupling our expertise with the experience and capabilities of the Xyratex team and working together to accelerate innovation in the months and years to come.”

Seagate expects revenue contribution from this acquisition to be between $500 - $600 million, and for the acquisition to be neutral to earnings per share in its fiscal year 2015, ending July 3, 2015.  All shares of Xyratex are expected to be delisted from the NASDAQ stock market immediately following the closing.

Allen & Company LLC served as financial advisor and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati served as primary legal advisor to Seagate in connection with the transaction.