Samsung Electronics released a super-sized announcement two days after Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong’s’Outdoor Message’ came out.
Samsung Electronics officially announced that it will pursue a meaningful merger and acquisition (M&A) in the semiconductor sector by 2023. It is extremely unusual for a large company like Samsung Electronics to officially mention a large-scale M&A plan.
In a conference call held after the announcement of the fourth quarter results on the 28th, CEO Yoon-ho Choi (CFO) of Samsung Electronics’ Management Support Office said, “We intend to further solidify our market leadership position in existing industries and strengthen the foundation for sustainable growth in new industries.” “We will strategically expand facility investment and promote M&A by actively utilizing the product.”
In the process of explaining President Choi’s three-year shareholder return policy (2021-2023), he made this statement and said, “It is difficult to specify the timing of implementation, but the possibility of realizing a meaningful M&A within this policy period (2023) is positive. It is evaluated as” he said.
This is the first time that Samsung Electronics officialized an M&A since it acquired Harman, an automotive electronics company, in February 2017.
Then, what kind of company is Samsung Electronics paying attention to? The market sees that it is likely to be a semiconductor-related company. This is because global semiconductor companies are reorganizing the market through joint ventures.
SK Hynix acquired the entire NAND business division of Intel in the US last year, and NVIDIA acquired ARM (Am Holdings) and AMD acquired Xilinx. Qualcomm recently bought Nubia, a semiconductor startup central processing unit (CPU) design company.
In the market, there is even speculation that Samsung Electronics is taking over a company related to system semiconductors (non-memory semiconductors). This is because, when Samsung Electronics released its’Semiconductor Vision 2030′ in April of last year, it announced that it will invest 133 trillion won in both R&D and production technology expansion by 2030 to achieve the world’s No. 1 system semiconductor. In the system semiconductor field, Samsung Electronics is not as strong as the memory semiconductor field, which is the number one in the world.
Accordingly, Silicon Motion, which supplies products to Samsung Electronics, Intel, and Micron as a developer of NAND flash control chips (controller IC), is being discussed as a leading candidate for acquisition.
Of course, companies related to next-generation mobile communications, artificial intelligence (AI), and electronic equipment businesses, which Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong is particularly interested in, are likely to be the targets of the acquisition.
On the 26th, Vice Chairman Lee said in Samsung Electronics’ internal network, “Regardless of my situation, Samsung should continue to follow the path it should go. It should also be faithful to the corporate duty of investment and job creation.” Accordingly, it seems that President Choi’s remarks that day came under rapport with Vice-Chairman Lee, who is in prison.