Rd Intensity And Acquisitions In High Technology Industries

Economic analysis of high-tech industries often assumes that firms¿ abilities to survive in such an industry depend on their own internal R&D efforts. High-tech firms may choose to specialize in either this internal growth (through R&D) strategy or an external growth strategy of acquiring other firms or firms¿ operations. They studied 200 electronics firms over 10 years to test the relationship between R&D intensity and the probability of acquisition. Robust to a variety of dependent variable specifications, they find a strong and significant negative correlation, suggesting that electronics firms may be specializing in one activity or the other. Firms with greater intangible assets, higher profitability and lower debt to asset ratios are more likely to acquire. Tables.

Theory suggests R&D intensity and acquisition activity may be either directly or inversely related. However, we know relatively little about which firms are responsible for acquisition activity in high-technology industries, which are not only R&D-intensive, but also have substantial acquisition activity in the United States. Using a panel of 217 US electronic and electrical equipment firms from 1985-93 and limited dependent variable estimation techniques, we find a substantial negative correlation between R&D-intensity and a firm's propensity to acquire. This result is surprisingly robust to numerous sensitivity tests and is significant in both the 'within' and 'between' dimensions of our data.

In this paper we investigate the motives of high-tech acquirers by analysing their revealed preferences in terms of the high-tech companies they acquire. Using a large sample of acquisitions involving publicly traded firms from various countries we ask whether high technology acquisitions are best understood in terms of acquirers seeking to source externally special innovation-related assets by acquiring firms with quot;superiorquot; innovative performance; or acquirers seeking to acquire firms with quot;inferiorquot; innovative performance in order to turn them around. We find evidence that acquisition is a very noisy phenomenon and that economic and innovation related variables explain only a modest part of the probability of becoming a target. We do however find that, compared to non-acquired firms, high-tech targets tend to be somewhat larger, to have poorer profitability, lower Tobin's q and liquidity. In relation to their innovative profile, targets, in general, seem to have a relatively larger stock of accumulated knowledge (stock of citation-weighted patents), relatively higher Ramp;D inputs (Ramp;D-intensity), but they are more likely to generate no Ramp;D output (citation-weighted patent-intensity) before they are acquired. We conclude that high technology acquisitions reflect a process which is primarily driven by acquirers wishing to exploit the potential for turning around firms which, despite a good past record, appear to be innovatively and economically inefficient before they are acquired.

These ten chapters explore sequential aspects of the M & A process, from the pre-combination phase, to issues that should be taken into account when considering a merger or acquisition, to post-merger integration concerning the determinants of acquisition performance.

"This research effort seeks to understand the relationship between acquisitions and profitability by looking at the industrial sector for high technology semiconductor companies."--Introduction, p. 20.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity represents a major force in the global business environment, whether measured by the number or the value of deals. Even though existing research finds acquisitions, on average, do not improve firm performance, the dominant explanation for why firms pursue acquisitions is that they seek increased performance. There is a recognized need to model post-acquisition performance to help distinguish between acquisitions that will fail and those that will succeed. By addressing methodological shortcomings in existing post-acquisition performance research, the present research develops a model for predicting when acquisitions of high-technology targets result in improved performance. Implications for both theory and managerial practice are identified.

This study examines how interfirm heterogeneities in modes of technology acquisition and technology intensities are linked to firm ownership in India using a panel data set of about 2,000 firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange for the period 2003-2014 drawn from the Prowess database of the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy. Foreign ownership is categorized according to the level of control exercised by foreign firms as defined under the Companies Act of India. A comparative analysis of domestic and different categories of foreign firms was conducted for two time periods: (i) the global boom period of 2004-2008, and (ii) the post global financial crisis period of 2008-2014. A horizontal cluster analysis of 3-digit, industry-level data shows that foreign firms cluster in high-technology industries. The propensity score matching analysis, however, reveals that in a matched sample of foreign and domestic firms, majority-owned foreign firms spend less on research and development and more on technology transfers than their local counterparts, demonstrating that the level of equity holdings by a foreign firm matters. There is little evidence of the global financial crisis affecting the relocation of research and development activities to India. An alternative assessment based on panel data regression analysis confirms these findings and validates the propensity score matching results.

This article provides evidence from Japanese acquisitions and divestitures after the late 1990s on the effect of corporate R&D to stimulate inter-firm asset trade. Consistent with the notion that R&D increases a firm's opportunities for and ability to profit from synergy with external assets, regressions performed on a sample of publicly traded manufacturers reveal that R&D intensity and the breadth of patented technologies positively and significantly correlate with a firm's probabilities to acquire and sell off assets. The link of R&D and divestiture is qualitatively homogeneous across industries and time but the positive and significant R&D-acquisition link concentrates in industries where the interdependence of firms' innovative activities is relatively high and time when firms likely had large pent-up demand for asset trade.