$3 billion in 4 years! Major LED manufacturers have frequent mergers and acquisitions
According to the Business Times, major international manufacturers have successively sold LED lighting products or LED lighting business since 2016. According to statistics, in the transactions of major European and American manufacturers such as GE, Osram, Philips and Cree, buyers have spent a total of nearly 3 billion US dollars for acquisitions. Market research agency TrendFocer believes that in the future Cree may find chip partners in Asia.
Among these transactions, the sale of 80.1% stake in Lumileds by Philips is very dramatic. The buyer was originally a holding group formed by the mainland Jinsha River and Chinese investment companies. In the acquisition, Philips sold approximately 80.1% of Lumileds to the US private equity fund Apollo Fund at a price of US$2 billion, while Philips still held 19.9% of Lumileds.
Looking at the buyers, only the case of Osram's sale to the mainland packaging factory Mulinsen involved mainland capital, and the sale amount was as high as 400 million euros. The other buyers of Cree LEDs are also very special, providing special solutions in the fields of memory, computer and storage for up to In the past 30 years, SMART has acquired Cree LED for 300 million US dollars and stepped into the LED lighting business. How to gain a foothold in the highly competitive LED lighting field? Quite a surprise to the market.
TrendForce's Optoelectronics Research Office pointed out that in recent years, Chinese LED manufacturers have risen rapidly due to their advantages in production capacity and cost. Other major LED manufacturers such as Nichia, OSRAM OS, Lumileds, and CREE have continued to lose market share. In addition, the global economic environment has not been stable in the past two years. It makes the traditional LED industry giants face the dilemma of changing owners, selling or selling assets.
The agency further analyzed that Cree only sold the LED business at a transaction price of 300 million US dollars, which is lower than the acquisition amount of Lumileds and OSRAM OS. The main reason is that the United States has many jurisdictions and restrictions on the sale of technology companies in recent years. The carbonization of WolfSpeed under Cree Silicon (SiC) business is a key component of the third-generation semiconductor. It has close cooperation with the US aerospace technology and military industries, and has mastered a large number of sensitive technologies. In addition, LED-related technologies and patents are difficult to separate from SiC technology, so it can only rely on SiC technology. Reliable buyers in the U.S. are also limited in transaction value.
In this regard, TrendForce said that even if the company changes owners, Cree is still an important customer of its foundry partners, and will not adjust its business structure in the short term, so the trend of the foundry supply chain shifting to Asia has not changed. The new shareholders have no need to develop SiC substrates, so they may adopt a more flexible business strategy, and it is expected that there will be a possibility to find chip resource partners in Asia in the future.
