Qualcomm is set to terminate its multi-billion dollar takeover of fellow chipmaker NXP.
The US firm missed a deadline to confirm its continued interest in the deal following months of delays from the Chinese government.
“We intend to terminate our purchase agreement to acquire NXP when the agreement expires at the end of the day today, pending any new material developments,” said Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said during the company’s third quarter earnings report call.
“We obviously got caught up in something that was above us,” Mollenkopf added in a later interview, “We think moving on, reducing the amount of uncertainty in the business and increasing the focus is the right thing to do with the company.”
Qualcomm NXP bid
Qualcomm has been trying to acquire NXP, best known for its semiconductor work in self-driving cars, for more than two years, with the deal at one point valued at $47 billion.
As part of the terms of the negotiations, Qualcomm will have to pay a breakup fee of $2 billion, but will now look to use the funds it is saving to target other takeover targets.
Qualcomm was itself the target of a hostile takeover bid by Chinese competitor Broadcom earlier in the year, with the latter launching a $110bn bid that was shut down by US regulators.
As mentioned, the news came as Qualcomm released its third-quarter financial results, which saw the firm also confirm it would buy back $30bn worth of shares following the collapse of the NXP deal.
It also saw Qualcomm reveal that Apple was set to stop using its products in favour of those from a competitor, most likely Intel.
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