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Seagate, the data storage company, has announced its intent<\/a> to acquire Intevac<\/a>, a hard drive equipment producer, in an all-cash deal worth $119 million.<\/p>\n Seagate said on Thursday that it\u2019ll pay $4 per share in a tender offer for Intevac, which is publicly traded. Seagate will initially purchase a minimum of \u201cat least one share more than 50%\u201d of Intevac\u2019s issued and outstanding shares,\u00a0and then execute a \u201csecond step\u201d merger to acquire the company\u2019s remaining shares.<\/p>\n Intevac\u2019s board of directors and largest shareholders unanimously approved the transaction. Seagate expects it to close in late March or early April, subject to customary closing conditions.<\/p>\n Santa Clara-based Intevac, founded in 1991 as a spin-off from tech firm Varian Associates, manufactures thin film deposition systems. It IPO\u2019d in 1995, and has expanded its footprint over the years to territories including China, Malaysia, and Singapore.<\/p>\n On its website, Intavec says its products support hard drive disk media production and the upgrade of existing hard drive systems. One of the technologies that the firm touts as its preferred solution, heat-assisted magnetic recording, or HAMR, improves the \u201cwriteability\u201d and storage density of hard drives by applying heat energy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not tough to see how this fits squarely into Seagate\u2019s hard drive disk business. In December, Seagate announced<\/a> its first HAMR-based hard drive after a two-decade hiatus from the tech, and the company plans to ship HAMR-based drives to several customers, including a \u201cleading cloud provider,\u201d this year.<\/p>\n Several of Seagate\u2019s rivals, including Western Digital and Toshiba, are also working on HAMR-based drives, spurred by the growing worldwide demand for storage. HAMR-based drives generally have a cost advantage over incumbent solid-state technologies, making them especially attractive to public cloud vendors.<\/p>\n Intavec\u2019s market cap was around $91.17 million<\/a> as of Thursday. In its most recent fiscal quarter (Q3 2024), the firm notched $28.5 million in revenue, up 59% year-over-year, but posted a $2.17 million net loss.<\/p>\n Intavec late last year said<\/a> it was exploring \u201cstrategic options\u201d and undergoing a restructuring that the company anticipated would \u201cmaterially strengthen its profitability.\u201d One of those strategic options was an exit from the public markets, it seems.<\/p>\n Intavec is Seagate\u2019s first major acquisition<\/a> since the company bought Kioxia, a supplier of flash memory and solid-state drives, in 2017. Seagate has made 11 acquisitions in its 46-year history, according to financial database Tracxn<\/a>, totaling around $18 billion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n