Chinese bid to take over Micron would face tough U.S. review

A China-backed bid for chip maker Micron Technology would encounter close scrutiny by American national-security officials worried about Chinese control of U.S. technology firms.

China’s Tsinghua Unigroup is preparing a $23 billion bid for Boise-based Micron that could be announced as early as Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Such an acquisition would give China the world’s fifth-largest chipmaker by revenue, one able to compete with the likes of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix with manufacturing capabilities in the U.S., Japan and Singapore.

Tsinghua will bid $21 a share, or about 19 percent more than Micron’s Monday closing price, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Micron spokesman Dan Francisco said the company hasn’t received a proposal.

News of the potential bid pushed Micron stock up $2, or 11.4 percent, to close at $19.61 Tuesday, its biggest gain since December 2011.

State-controlled Tsinghua Unigroup is the investment arm of Tsinghua University of Beijing, which counts China’s President Xi Jinping and former President Hu Jintao among its alumni. Last month, it was announced Tsinghua University will join with the University of Washington to start a graduate technology institute in Bellevue.

Acquisitions of U.S. firms by Chinese-backed entities generally raise security concerns with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), a panel led by the Treasury Department that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. business to protect national security.

Scrutiny over a bid for Micron — the largest U.S. manufacturer of memory chips — would undoubtedly be high though approval could be possible, said people familiar with CFIUS.

“Whether it has a chance requires very detailed analysis of information — much of which is confidential,” said Stewart Baker, a former National Security Agency general counsel and now a partner at the Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson.

A deal for Micron should be able to get through the review with conditions, said Nova Daly, a senior public-policy adviser at Wiley Rein in Washington, D.C. A purchase would give China, which accounts for more than half the world’s demand for semiconductors, the technology to build memory chips that go into computers and smartphones.

“This is a deal that can get through CFIUS because while semiconductors are an important technology, the technology behind Micron’s products is widely diffused,” said Daly, a former U.S. Treasury official who managed CFIUS reviews.

Hans Mosesmann, an analyst at Raymond James, was more skeptical. Memory chips, in particular those used in computer storage, are “strategic in nature in next-generation data centers with potential security implications,” Mosesmann wrote in a note to clients Tuesday.

The U.S. will probably block the deal, given hacking incidents reportedly from China, Mosesmann wrote, adding: “This deal won’t happen, regardless of the price.”

Chinese investors acquiring American businesses were subject to the most national-security reviews in 2013, according to the panel’s most recent report to Congress.

Micron makes two types of chips, dynamic random access memory — used as short-term memory in computers and phones — and Nand flash, which acts as storage in those devices. China accounts for 41 percent of its sales.

While those chips can be bought from other suppliers, including Samsung, no Chinese company can match Micron’s advanced manufacturing.

A Tsinghua Unigroup deal for Micron would be the largest outbound acquisition for a China-based company, surpassing Cnooc’s $17.4 billion bid for Nexen Energyin 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Some analysts say that a bid of $21-a-share is not high enough.

“It’s an extremely lowball bid,” Srini Sundararajan, an analyst at Summit Research Partners, said in a phone interview. “I think they’re using this as a trial balloon to see how everybody reacts.”

Not only is the proposal almost 75 percent lower than where the stock was trading in December, it’s also 40 percent below where analysts had seen the stock going on its own in the next year.

Micron should be valued at about $33.75 a share based on the valuations of peers and analysts’ forecasts for better results, said Sachin Shah, a special situations and merger arbitrage strategist at Albert Fried & Co.

The chip maker has had its share of issues, though.

In June, it reported its first revenue decline in more than two years on weakening demand for its dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips used in PCs.

The stock is down 44 percent this year. Micron had a market value of $21 billion as of Tuesday.