ARM taken over by Japan's SoftBank

[Kjelt]

Just read that ARM will be probably taken over by the japanese softbank ( never heard of them myself) for 32 billion $!
Curious what that will mean for the future, hopefully cheap Keil development licenses for non commercial development 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-arm-holdings-m-a-softbank-group-idUSKCN0ZY03B

[batteksystem]

Softbank is basically an IT company, not related to embedded development. I am not really sure what they are after and how they could benefit from such a deal.

[kaz911]

Well - my wife works for SoftBank and they have a plan. Masa-San (The CEO/founder/owner) is the Japanese version of Bill Gates - just more down to earth. He actually has an engineering background and is very smart and down to earth. I think he feels best with his sleeves rolled up ready to solve problems.

SoftBank is a huge Japanese owned company - that among others owns SoftBank Mobile in Japan, Sprint in the US, 28% of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan (very profitable)  and a heck of a lot of other companies. They also own the company behind Pepper the robot that has been a lot in the press. Masa-San negotiated exclusivity on iPhone from Apple for the first ? 5 years for Japan.

Masa-San has developed the hardware/ideas that is currently restructuring the network at Sprint - and Mr. Masa-San often goes out and does implementations and debugging  with the engineers from Sprint. Sprint has a bad rep - but is slowly getting each " state " under control with the new investments.

[edit] According to Forbes - SoftBank is currently #69th on Forbes Global 2000 list.

[RogerRowland]

Well, ARM is just 5 minutes down the road from where I currently work, and they suggest that if the shareholders agree to the takeover that the UK workforce will be doubled. Maybe I have one last career change left in me .... hmmmm ....

[daqq]

Well crap.

[DmitryL]

Well, ARM is just 5 minutes down the road from where I currently work, and they suggest that if the shareholders agree to the takeover that the UK workforce will be doubled. Maybe I have one last career change left in me .... hmmmm ....

Well.. Explosive growth has some dangers: it attracts a swarm of shitty managers of all sorts, then they start bring in their friends and multiply like germs.  Large UK companies seem to be quite affected by this plague. At least in my experience with Nortel/Symbian/Nokia

[donotdespisethesnake]

Two reasons

1) "Internet of Things"
2) pile of cash and fall in sterling makes UK companies cheaper

Both sound very bad reasons for a takeover, and it's a bad fit. A mobile phone operator doesn't need to get involved in designing chips.

There is likely to be a counter-offer. Either way, could be a rocky road for ARM.

[SteveyG]

Well, ARM is just 5 minutes down the road from where I currently work, and they suggest that if the shareholders agree to the takeover that the UK workforce will be doubled. Maybe I have one last career change left in me .... hmmmm ....

By all accounts, it's not a great place to work. I have a few friends that work there, but the work is mundane and fairly restrictive unless you get into sales and support.

[DmitryL]

Well - my wife works for SoftBank and they have a plan. Masa-San (The CEO/founder/owner) is the Japanese version of Bill Gates - just more down to earth. He actually has an engineering background and is very smart and down to earth. I think he feels best with his sleeves rolled up ready to solve problems.

This makes me smile
The last-but-one Nokia CEO (don't remember his name) also had an engineering background (RF AFAIK) which didn't stop him from running the company into the ground.
It would be a bit pity to see if a pattern "buy a company -> mess with it -> run it down -> sell to microsoft or whoever" applies to ARM as well.

[EEVblog]

 

[lilos]

A free ISA is coming from RISC-V! Why someone will pay for arm licence ? This make Arm price cheap.
 I think that the reason they sell.

[RogerRowland]

By all accounts, it's not a great place to work. I have a few friends that work there, but the work is mundane and fairly restrictive unless you get into sales and support.

Yes, I have friends and ex-colleagues there too, I'll take some soundings before making any waves ..... not a time to jump out of a frying pan, I guess, but worthwhile keeping eyes and ears open ...

[Monkeh]

Well - my wife works for SoftBank and they have a plan. Masa-San (The CEO/founder/owner) is the Japanese version of Bill Gates - just more down to earth. He actually has an engineering background and is very smart and down to earth. I think he feels best with his sleeves rolled up ready to solve problems.

This makes me smile
The last-but-one Nokia CEO (don't remember his name) also had an engineering background (RF AFAIK) which didn't stop him from running the company into the ground.

Who, Elop? He worked for Microsoft, went to Nokia, ran them into the ground until their phone division got bought by Microsoft, and got a bonus for it. I don't think it was anything to do with his engineering background!

[RogerRowland]

This makes me smile
The last-but-one Nokia CEO (don't remember his name) also had an engineering background (RF AFAIK) which didn't stop him from running the company into the ground.
It would be a bit pity to see if a pattern "buy a company -> mess with it -> run it down -> sell to microsoft or whoever" applies to ARM as well.

Didn't MS just sell Nokia to Foxconn recently, or was that only part of it? ... I suppose every sale makes money for somebody ...

[JPortici]

the dumbphone division, yes.
that's sad. at home we always keep a couple of those around, i still have a nokia 2600 from 2008 in the emergency drawer (along with 3330 and such)  though i had to trash a couple others from 2014

[DmitryL]

Well - my wife works for SoftBank and they have a plan. Masa-San (The CEO/founder/owner) is the Japanese version of Bill Gates - just more down to earth. He actually has an engineering background and is very smart and down to earth. I think he feels best with his sleeves rolled up ready to solve problems.

This makes me smile
The last-but-one Nokia CEO (don't remember his name) also had an engineering background (RF AFAIK) which didn't stop him from running the company into the ground.

Who, Elop? He worked for Microsoft, went to Nokia, ran them into the ground until their phone division got bought by Microsoft, and got a bonus for it. I don't think it was anything to do with his engineering background!

I wrote "last-but-one". Olli-Pekka or whoever his name was. By elop taking over, Nokia was already in a good rotten shape. It still wasn't visible from outside though.

[Monkeh]

Well - my wife works for SoftBank and they have a plan. Masa-San (The CEO/founder/owner) is the Japanese version of Bill Gates - just more down to earth. He actually has an engineering background and is very smart and down to earth. I think he feels best with his sleeves rolled up ready to solve problems.

This makes me smile
The last-but-one Nokia CEO (don't remember his name) also had an engineering background (RF AFAIK) which didn't stop him from running the company into the ground.

Who, Elop? He worked for Microsoft, went to Nokia, ran them into the ground until their phone division got bought by Microsoft, and got a bonus for it. I don't think it was anything to do with his engineering background!

I wrote "last-but-one". Olli-Pekka or whoever his name was. By elop taking over, Nokia was already in a good rotten shape. It still wasn't visible from outside though.

They've had two since Elop.. Kallasvuo was a bloody lawyer.

[wraper]

Well - my wife works for SoftBank and they have a plan. Masa-San (The CEO/founder/owner) is the Japanese version of Bill Gates - just more down to earth. He actually has an engineering background and is very smart and down to earth. I think he feels best with his sleeves rolled up ready to solve problems.

This makes me smile
The last-but-one Nokia CEO (don't remember his name) also had an engineering background (RF AFAIK) which didn't stop him from running the company into the ground.

Who, Elop? He worked for Microsoft, went to Nokia, ran them into the ground until their phone division got bought by Microsoft, and got a bonus for it. I don't think it was anything to do with his engineering background!

Nokia was already down to the drain at the time when he came. IMO his job was takeover of Nokia mobile business and everyone in business knew it. Those idiots made multiple low end models with exactly the same PCBs with slightly different parts populated  depending on model . And insisted on crappy Symbian, when all others were into high end smartphones.
Worked at warranty repair of Nokia phones at that time. We needed to keep all that stock of parts for all that shitload of slightly different models  . Nokia should have thought they will win the market by spamming it with quantity of models.

[andersm]

I wrote "last-but-one". Olli-Pekka or whoever his name was. By elop taking over, Nokia was already in a good rotten shape. It still wasn't visible from outside though.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. He's a lawyer by education, not an engineer.

[andersm]

A free ISA is coming from RISC-V! Why someone will pay for arm licence ?

RISC-V is still at the stage of an academic research project, while ARM have a proven product with a huge ecosystem behind it. Maybe RISC-V will eventually become a serious contender, but it will take some time.

[GEuser]

It's a bit off topic yet associated imo , not starting a Brexit argument either so control yourselves .

BUT , this deal was in planning ages ago probably , and lately i have noticed quite a few "other" deals still going ahead and being announced , Boots (chemist company) going ahead in Korea still and a few others over the last few days i have seen , not that I'm deliberately looking about , so Brexit is still palatable it seems in the business system it appears?

[nctnico]

IMHO Nokia is a story apart. The way I see it the core of Nokia is an investment firm which invests in whatever they see a market in and leave when no more profit can be made. They are a clever bunch by letting Microsoft pay for cleaning up after them and now they just reboot a new mobile phone company where they don't have all the legacy support or have to do massive lay-offs. And if that doesn't work they can always go back to making rubber boots.

[lilos]

A free ISA is coming from RISC-V! Why someone will pay for arm licence ?

RISC-V is still at the stage of an academic research project, while ARM have a proven product with a huge ecosystem behind it. Maybe RISC-V will eventually become a serious contender, but it will take some time.

https://www.sifive.com/

They are ready for use cores one big U500 and one for micro E500.

Freedom U500 Platform
U5 Coreplex at 1.6GHz+
RV64GC Architecture
Multicore, Cache Coherency Support
High Speed Peripherals: PCIe 3.0, USB3.0, GbE, DDR3/4
TSMC 28nm

Freedom E300 Platform
E3 Coreplex
RV32IMC/RV32EMC Architecture
On chip Flash, OTP, SRAM
TSMC 180nm

Here is dev kits Full FPGA !
https://dev.sifive.com/dev-kits/


Risc-V are perfect for IOT.

@blueskull we don`t need core i5 for iot! and i`m not against big company just love university projects like risc-v cos
 they give you freedom to learn and not stop you by hiding thinks.

[andersm]

They are ready for use cores one big U500 and one for micro E500.

I've seen the announcements, but I don't remember reading that they'd have any customers making silicon yet.

[picandmix]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36822806

[Kilrah]

Duplicate.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/arm-bought-for-32-billion-$-by-japanese-softbank/

[Monkeh]

They are ready for use

Tell me that when Digikey have ten thousand in stock.

People will buy ARM because it's proven, has huge support in software, and a wide variety of hardware vendors. Anyone wanting to butt in on their market now will, maybe, be relevant in 10 years.. if they have silicon right now.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

One of the strengths of ARM *was* that it had no real connections to anybody else. If you decided to use their IP there was no decision "do we support a competitor" involved. That was true at the chip fab level and at the end user level. While SoftBank may be a great parent for ARM (only time will tell), it does lump them in with a bunch of other tech holdings. It's not quite like Qualcomm or IBM buying them, but there is a little of the same flavor.

Bob

[dannyf]

As a long time armh investor, I'm both happy  with the offer and wishing that it doesnt fo through with Softbank.

Im happy that people are realizing armhs potential. And a 40 percent premium is nice to have, especially when my cost basis is practically zero.

On the flip side, I hope other buyers will come along. Armh has a very scaleable product, in iot, phone, tablet, servers, and distributed computing, I am surprised that no Chinese buyer has emerged before Softbank.

With China being a leader in those category, and it's potential to deploy armh products in cars (thus creating a credible competitor to renasas), the mkt is endless.

Not to mention the strategic risk of letting the Japanese to have both arm and renansas.

With that, I think the number Softbank put on armh grossly undervalued the firm.

I would easily put a 50bn figure on that, and if they can get into even just the domestic Chinese car mkt, easily a 100bn company.

[kaz911]

Well - my wife works for SoftBank and they have a plan. Masa-San (The CEO/founder/owner) is the Japanese version of Bill Gates - just more down to earth. He actually has an engineering background and is very smart and down to earth. I think he feels best with his sleeves rolled up ready to solve problems.

This makes me smile
The last-but-one Nokia CEO (don't remember his name) also had an engineering background (RF AFAIK) which didn't stop him from running the company into the ground.
It would be a bit pity to see if a pattern "buy a company -> mess with it -> run it down -> sell to microsoft or whoever" applies to ARM as well.

Masa-San is the owner/founder and CEO. And he is very smart. He almost went bankrupt with SoftBank during one of the market bounces  - but managed to get through the fire - and rebuild SoftBank. SoftBank used to own COMDEX Exhibitions in the US where I met him (and sold it before COMDEX collapsed)  He is very hands on with the companies he invests in and works very hard. He started in 1981 and has run the company since then. So he is not the overnight hired CEO in temporary residence.

[DmitryL]

Masa-San is the owner/founder and CEO. And he is very smart. He almost went bankrupt with SoftBank during one of the market bounces  - but managed to get through the fire - and rebuild SoftBank. SoftBank used to own COMDEX Exhibitions in the US where I met him (and sold it before COMDEX collapsed)  He is very hands on with the companies he invests in and works very hard. He started in 1981 and has run the company since then. So he is not the overnight hired CEO in temporary residence.

Ok. I will tell my friends from ARM that they are in a good hands...

[Kjelt]

And he is very smart. He almost went bankrupt with SoftBank during one of the market bounces.

uuhhhhh

[PChi]

I'm not convinced that the numbers stack up. To cover 32 billion requires selling a hell of a lot of licences at a few cents each.

[josem]

I'm not convinced that the numbers stack up. To cover 32 billion requires selling a hell of a lot of licences at a few cents each.

Doesn't sound too hard:

"By 2017 ARM expects its customers to be shipping roughly 41 billion chips that use ARM IP every year."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-how-arms-business-model-works/

[photon]

That kind of money currupts. They made an offer ARM couldn't refuse. It will be interesting to see where ARM is in 10 years.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330147

[free_electron]

arm should have given the finger ...

[EEVblog]

http://www.cringely.com/2016/07/18/softbank-paying-32-billion-arm-holdings/

[EEVblog]

arm should have given the finger ...

They did, until the number went up to $32B

[EEVblog]

I'm not convinced that the numbers stack up. To cover 32 billion requires selling a hell of a lot of licences at a few cents each.

He'll change the way they do business.

[EEVblog]

https://www.hottopics.ht/stories/how-to/masayoshi-son-ceo-lost-70bn-in-day-before-conquering-world/

[RGB255_0_0]

arm should have given the finger ...

They did, until the number went up to $32B

After Brexit crashed the pound that $32bn made much more sense.

If all the companies that could have bought ARM, it's ended up being in the hands of a conglomerate.

32bn looks like a big number until you compare it to Facebook, Google and others of similar ilk.

Could well end up in a bidding war.

Sucks that this is our last big tech company losing its independence.

[all_repair]

I'm not convinced that the numbers stack up. To cover 32 billion requires selling a hell of a lot of licences at a few cents each.

He'll change the way they do business.

Few factors here.  Timing is right because of Brexit effect of the currencies.  And it is not about ARM,  it is about phone OS: Android and ApplePhoneOS.  It is about the future of most computing which is the mobile computing, and it is about the future of most online activities.  The market for smart phones for the rest of the world still has a lot of rooms to grow.  People keep changing phone and want to keep changing phone.

[photon]

Masayoshi Son seems to have a pair.

[kalleboo]

After Brexit crashed the pound that $32bn made much more sense.

And remember not only did the Sterling drop, the Yen shot up as well (since it's the safe-haven currency in Asia in times of turbulence, to Abe's chagrin)

edit: Although Brexit boosted the share price of ARM making it more expensive than pre-Brexit, even in Yen terms https://twitter.com/jamestitcomb/status/754966707769315333

[kaz911]

arm should have given the finger ...

They did, until the number went up to $32B

no they did not - there was one number presented and it has not changed. And I do not think ARM will change their business model apart from expanding their product offering. I think SoftBank will request less dividends than ARM has paid out - so the ARM business can grow.  And deal did not have anything to do with Brexit. Planning started way before Brexit.

[BravoV]

Hmm ... nice to know my pocket grows tad thicker, reference -> My ARMH 

[kaz911]

Sucks that this is our last big tech company losing its independence.

Being a public traded company is absolutely not independence I think being part of SoftBank is a lot more independent than working with 1000's of shareholders and institutional investors constant pressure for higher margins and dividends.

So ARM lost their independence when they went public.

[nctnico]

Hmm ... nice to know my pocket grows tad thicker, reference -> My ARMH 

Now show the shares you bought which didn't perform! You always see people bragging about their top stocks but how about the losses?

[Fred27]

I sold £10k of ARM shares a few months ago. I made a reasonable amount at the time, so not complaining.

[BravoV]

Hmm ... nice to know my pocket grows tad thicker, reference -> My ARMH 

Now show the shares you bought which didn't perform! You always see people bragging about their top stocks but how about the losses?

Where is the fun in "bragging" then ? 

C'mon nctnico, you're becoming grumpier. 

[julian1]

How do they make their money - through ip licensing?

Wouldn't Chinese fabricators would be able to skirt around a lot that?

[ebclr]

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/sf2plus-dev-kit/arrow-development-tools

[andersm]

Wouldn't Chinese fabricators would be able to skirt around a lot that?

Even if they did, they'd never be able to sell a chip like that. They'd be hit with import restrictions the moment they tried, and would likely face legal action inside the country as well.

[westfw]

it is not about ARM,  it is about phone OS: Android and ApplePhoneOS.

Well, that would be my biggest worry.  In recent years, ARM has done a lot of development at the low end of the market: CM3, CM0, CM0+, CM4.  It would be bad if that all stopped and they only did development on Phone-class (and higher) chips...

(I'm also an "investor."  This purchase looks to cheat me out of my first "ten-banger" (currently up 914% since 2006.)
As for less successful investments, my ST stock is down over 15% in the last year, and Cree isn't doing so well.  My MCHP is up about 100%, but that's somewhat less than a NASDAQ index fund would have been over the same period.)

[ebclr]

Be ready for latter October all your stocks will have a Hugh devaluation, at least buy some sox puts to protect yourself

[westfw]

Be ready for latter October all your stocks will have a Hugh devaluation

Why October?
I'm certainly not looking forward to November :-(