For those that already forgot WD and kioxia were in advanced merger talks back in 2021:
https://www.dowjones.com/professional/resources/blog/mmn-western-digital-kioxia
So this merger thing os just BS to pump the dying stock
4 replies (most recent on top)
What are the odds WD executives will be laying off workers while PRing about HAMR, mergers, and white knight investors in 2024 and 2025? Why should they change?
Just because you don't hear anything in the news, it doesn't mean it's not happening. From legal pov, there are a lot of things the involved parties cannot disclose while negotiation happen. You need to understand that NAND/SSD is becoming commodity like HDD was 20 years ago. It makes sense for WD-Kioxia to merge. The other three: Samsung, Hynix, and Micron still have DRAM, so they somewhat still have a way to supplement their NAND business differentiate themselves. At least if WD-Kioxia merge, they would become the #2 and potentially could merge with Micron. Whether it will happen or not, who knows, but the potential is always there. Twenty years ago we didn't think Maxtor, Quantum, and HGST would be gone within short period of time, but it happened. Also if you noticed the 2017-2018 semiconductors merge craze, you know what I'm talking about.
Talks got put on hold due to Kioxia's stock price tanking in 2021 and parties couldn't agree to a price. Recent Kioxia rumors restarted before the Elliott Management letter in May 2022, but that kicked off a serious strategic review (WD and Elliott signed a public agreement as part of Elliott's $1 billion investment) to look into splitting WD's HDD and Flash, so now the Kioxia merger argument has more teeth.
Place your bets!