Atheros Completes Opulan Acquisition

Atheros Communications Inc. (ATHR) announced that it has completed the previously announced acquisition of privately-held Opulan Technologies Corp. for approximately $72 million.


Atheros might pay additional cash to shareholders in the coming twelve months only if Opulan meets certain business targets.

California based Atheros develops semiconductor system solutions for communication products. Its products include solutions for wireless local area network (WLAN), mobile WLAN, Ethernet, Bluetooth, global positioning system (GPS), and powerline communications.

Opulan is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company, which specializes in providing solutions for passive optical networking (PON) and broadband access aggregation (MUX). The company was founded in 2003 and employs 111 people. Oplulan serves leading Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) addressing the growing networking market in China.


PON is expected to be a significant portion of the growing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) market. According to Infonetics Research, the market for PON equipment is expected to more than double between 2009 and 2014. The ramp in PON demand is being driven by the global upgrade of the existing broadband infrastructure to support ever-increasing bandwidth needs arising out of increased video delivery and content sharing.

The acquisition will further broaden Atheros’ capabilities in the networking market along with expanding its footprint in Asia. The addition of Opulan's team will augment Atheros' workforce in China, providing an opportunity to increase its engineering and customer support for the large broadband deployments that have been planned for the region.

The addition of Opulan’s Ethernet PON and MUX technologies will enable Atheros to provide carriers with an end-to-end (WAN-to-LAN) broadband architecture for the home and multi-dwelling unit. The transaction is expected to be neutral to 2010 earnings.

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