SMIC to buy 70% of LFoundry

Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) has reached an agreement with LFoundry Europe (LFE) and Marsica Innovation (MI) to acquire a 70% stake in LFoundry for EUR49 million (US$54.5 million), according to the companies.

LFoundry is headquartered in Italy and owned by LFE and MI. At the closing of the transaction, SMIC, LFE and MI will own 70%, 15% and 15% of LFoundry, respectively.

“Both SMIC and LFoundry will mutually benefit from the shared technology, products, human talents and complementary markets,”

said SMIC CEO Tzu-Yin Chiu. “This will additionally expand our production scale and allows us to service the automotive IC market and for LFoundry to enter into China’s consumer electronics market, thus bolstering our overall development and growth.”

SMIC’s total production capacity includes 162,000 8-inch wafers per month and 62,500 12-inch wafers per month, which represents a total 8-inch equivalent capacity of 302,600 wafers monthly. LFoundry’s capacity amounts to 40,000 8-inch wafers per month. Thus, by consolidating the entities, overall total capacity would increase by 13%; this combined capacity will provide increased flexibility and business opportunities for supporting both SMIC and LFoundry customers, the companies said.

SMIC has a diversified technology portfolio, including applications such as radio frequency (RF), connectivity, power management IC (PMIC), CMOS image sensors (CIS), embedded memory, MEMS, and others – mainly for the communications and consumer markets. Complementarily, LFoundry’s key focus is primarily in automotive, security, and industrial related applications including CIS, smart power, touch display driver IC (TDD”), embedded memory, and others. Such consolidation of technologies will broaden the overall technology portfolios and enlarge the areas of future development for both SMIC and LFoundry, the companies indicated.

Source