CSR slashes Zoran valuation, Arm acquires Obsidian

CSR has slashed $195m from the price it will pay to merge Zoran into its operations and cancelled the $240m share buyback programme in light of the Zoran's downgraded financial projections.

A statement from the Cambridge Bluetooth pioneer says the boards of both companies have agreed to the new proposed deal worth $484m (£300m) in CSR stock and cash as opposed to the $679m (£420m) stock offering made in February this year.

The change to the deal was made following two major incidents impacting Zoran's near-term outlook, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the announcement by Cisco Systems that it will exit its Flip digital video camera product line.

CSR said at the time it was reviewing the implications of Zoran's profit warning and the result is this, a revised deal that ultimately values Zoran stock at $9.19 per share compared to the $13.03 February valuation.

The original deal saw CSR offer Zoran shareholders 1.85 ordinary shares in CSR stock for every Zoran share held. It also intended to return up to $240m (£148m) to existing shareholders via an on-market share buyback programme.

The revised terms are for 0.589 ordinary shares of CSR plus $6.26 in cash for each share of Zoran common stock, representing $171m in shares and a total of $313m in cash, to be funded from existing resources.

CSR said the deal, now expected to close Q3 this year, still had the same strategic logic of the original deal, combining Zoran's extensive imaging and video capabilities together with its own expertise in connectivity and location.

With less financial detail, but already complete, is the acquistion of Obsidian Software, a leading verification and validation firm for processor design, by the world's leading provider of mobile phone chips, Arm.

Based in Austin, Texas, Obsidian is a privately owned company which has been partnering with Arm for several years and has gross assets valued below $2m. By bringing the company in-house and making it part of an Arm processor validation team in Austin, Arm hopes to be able to reduce time to market of its architecture.

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