Faroudja, long known in consumer electronics circles for its advances in video line-double and quadrupling enhancement technologies among other things, has entered an agreement to be acquired by Sage, a supplier of digital display processors, the companies announced.
In a stock-for-stock transaction valued at $155 million for $3.9 million shares of Sage common stock to be issued Faroudja stockholder, Faroudja will merge into a wholly owned subsidiary of Sage. The acquisition, which was unanimously approved by both boards, is scheduled to be completed at the close of the quarter ending June 30, 2000.
Chandra Reddy, Sage CEO, will continue to head the expanded operations. Glenn W. Marschel, Jr., Faroudja president and CEO, will join the Sage Board.
“Together, we will provide the premier solutions for today’s display devices and be well positioned to provide a best-of-class imaging solution for a new generation of displays for PCs, TVs, and digital appliances,” Reddy said in a prepared statement. “Combining the companies will enable us to accelerate the development of new, high value-added IC products to address these and other emerging digital video applications. The combined business will be significantly stronger in terms of technology, marketing, distribution and financial perspectives with a total market opportunity of hundreds of millions of units annually.”
Faroudja’s Marschel added: “We at Faroudja have spoken consistently of our strategy of developing and marketing high-performance chips for emerging display markets. Sage has proven to be the pacesetter in achieving rapid time-to-market for digital display processors, and we believe that together we can rapidly deliver a superset of imaging and video functionality in a single-chip design. Sage has already developed a strong distribution and customer support network for these chip products.”
