Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a developer of NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Shannon Systems, a supplier of enterprise-class PCIe SSD and storage array solutions to China’s internet and other industries.
Under the terms of the agreement, Silicon Motion will acquire Shannon for a total purchase price of $57.5 million, which includes a combination of cash, equity and contingency payments. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory review and approval, and it is expected to close by the end of July 2015.
“China has become the largest internet market in the world and its internet companies have already widely adopted SSDs for their data centers and hyperscale servers. More recently, Chinese corporates and government organizations have started using SSDs for data virtualization. These operators of corporate and internet infrastructure have increasingly been turning to Shannon for world-class, locally developed and supported SSD solutions,” said Wallace Kou, President and CEO of Silicon Motion. “Shannon was co-founded by Dr. Xueshi Yang, Marvell’s previous SSD controller architect and a Seagate veteran, with a mission of developing innovative and competitive enterprise SSD solutions in China. I am excited that upon closing, Xueshi will be joining Silicon Motion’s executive team to continue spearheading enterprise SSD activities.”
In 2014, Shannon launched the industry’s first 6.4TB PCIe SSD with ultra-low access latency and a power envelope of less than 25 watts. More recently, Shannon introduced PCIe-RAID technology, an innovative flash array solution that offers enterprise customers uncompromised performance and high availability. Shannon has already successfully expanded its customer base to more than 80 companies and count China’s leading internet companies in e-commerce, on-line travel, and mobile security as key customers. In 2015, Shannon expects to rapidly scale sales to approximately $14 to $18 million. The impact of this acquisition is expected to be slightly accretive to Silicon Motion’s non-GAAP earnings per share in the second half of 2015 and more accretive in full-year 2016.