onsemi trimmed its Synaptics bid to $5.7B after a rival appeared
Key takeaways
- onsemi will now pay $123 a share in cash, about $5.7 billion, down from roughly $7 billion in the June agreement.
- The change followed an unsolicited rival proposal; the rival and its terms have not been disclosed.
- The US FTC has approved the deal, and closing is expected by mid-2027 pending a Synaptics shareholder vote.
$123 a share, all cash. That is what onsemi will now pay for Synaptics, putting the deal at about $5.7 billion, down from roughly $7 billion in the agreement the two companies signed on 25 June. The revision was announced on 1 October, as Pulse 2.0 reported.
What changed in the onsemi Synaptics deal
Synaptics received an unsolicited competing proposal, and the new terms came out of that. The rival has not been named and its price has not been disclosed. The amended agreement is all cash, and Morgan Stanley has provided fully committed debt financing, so nothing in the deal depends on onsemi raising money first, according to FourWeekMBA.
The Synaptics board unanimously decided the amended deal still serves shareholders. Synaptics CEO Rahul Patel said the all-cash structure provides "value certainty at a meaningful premium." onsemi CEO Hassane El-Khoury called it "a more financially attractive transaction for our shareholders."
Why a lower price can still be the safer deal
A smaller headline number reads like a concession, and for Synaptics holders it partly is. What they get back is certainty: cash does not move with onsemi's share price, and the removal of a financing condition takes away one way for the deal to collapse. Neither report says what the rival offered, which makes it hard to judge how close it came.
onsemi still expects at least $200 million in annual run-rate synergies and says the all-cash structure should add to its non-GAAP earnings per share straight after closing. Extra revenue gains, and bringing some Synaptics production in-house, are expected only after the first 18 months.
What to watch next
The US Federal Trade Commission has already approved the deal, but reviews in other jurisdictions are still running. Closing is expected by mid-2027, subject to a Synaptics shareholder vote. That vote is the next real test of whether holders prefer a certain $123 to an unknown rival.
It is one of several chip-sector deals in play this autumn. AMD's agreed $8.2 billion all-stock purchase of World Labs is another; we covered it in our AMD and World Labs piece. The money behind this kind of deal is also visible in Samsung's $648 billion AI chip plan.
