By Jean Jacques Maleval | August 26, 2021 at 1:03 pm Reports of a Possible Merger Between Western Digital and Kioxia The Wall Street Journal broke a story on August 25, 2021, indicating that Western Digital was in advanced talks to merge with Kioxia Holdings. Both are long-time partners in the flash Ventures JV, dating back to the SanDisk and Toshiba Memory days. The article suggested that the deal could be valued at $20 billion and that Western Digital’s current valuation is roughly $19 billion – the merged companies would likely be run by Western Digital’s CEO, David Goeckeler.
According to the Journal, the transaction would be an all- stock deal, however, if the deal were to not come to fruition, Kioxia Holdings would be continuing down the path of an IPO. Kioxia’s IPO attempt last fall was received poorly by the market given the uncertainties surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic’s effect on the memory market. Since then, however, the pandemic has fueled significant acceleration in electronic device demand which has, in turn, fueled NAND demand.