The Role Of Acquisitions In High Technology Firms Profitability And 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.

Technology-focused acquisitions are an important complement to the firm’s internal product development efforts. There is considerable heterogeneity when comparing individual technology-focused acquisitions – especially with respect to acquisition timing and the deal value. To resolve some of this heterogeneity the author introduces the novel distinction between performance- and functionality-focused acquisitions. He characterizes this distinction based on a theoretical analysis, a qualitative study, and turns to a sample of acquisitions in the field of artificial intelligence for the quantitative study. There are two key findings. First, performance-focused acquisitions take place earlier in a target’s life cycle than functionality-focused ones. Second, the deal value is – at a comparable stage in a target’s life cycle – higher for performance-focused acquisitions. This thesis is relevant for management scholars and managers alike: Scholars learn about the implications of the distinction between performance- and functionality-focused acquisitions on markets for technology. Managers gain insights into how this distinction may guide their strategic decision making.

Innovation managers and innovation scholars increasingly emphasize the open innovation model, introduced by Henry Chesbrough in 2003. This model postulates that the innovation process should be flexible and cross organizational boundaries, which enables the transfer of knowledge and capabilities between organizations. However, until now, it remained unclear which types of firms apply open innovation, whether it realy raises their performance, and how this can be managed in the best way. This book addresses the important issue how innovative firms profit from external knowledge to improve their innovation performance. Using large scale empirical evidence from the Dutch industry, this book shows that especially Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and firms from low-tech sectors have increasingly adopted open innovation strategies over the period 1994-2004, and are clearly catching up large and high-tech firms. The results indicate that firms pursuing an open innovation strategy perform better with regard to innovation than firms that innovate exclusively in-house. In contrast to the common opinion that large Mergers & Acquisitions (M&As) are bad for innovation, it turns out that M&As have a positive impact on long-term innovation performance. In times of economic cricis this can be an extra argument for governments to back large scale M&As. Large (medium) high-tech M&As in the life sciences industry were analysed in-depth, to investigate the dynamics of post M&A integration. This book shows the different types of innovation synergies that can be expected from M&As and how they can be realized by systematic post M&A integration. Finally, this book studies how innovation brokers fulfill essential roles in innovation networks of SMEs in the agri-food sector. It provides guidelines for managers in innovation networks to improve the performance of these networks.

The comprehensive, practical guide to buying, selling, and merging technology companies The Technology M&A Guidebook provides executives and entrepreneurs interested in acquiring or selling a technology company with everything they need to know about the entire M&A process, from identifying target companies or buyers to financial analysis, due diligence, tax issues, valuation, and legal considerations. This book explores specific issues that are unique to technology M&A: assessing the impact of technology sector high-change rates; market-driven product development; company culture issues; engineers as managers and managers as engineers; consumer and technical product differences; technology marketing issues; intellectual property considerations; Internet interaction; and more. It also provides detailed analyses of factors involved in acquiring companies from different sectors, including: * Semiconductor equipment and chip manufacturers * PC/workstation and related hardware companies * Software businesses * Data networking and telecommunications firms * Internet-related companies Don't enter the M&A process unprepared. Let The Technology M&A Guidebook help you beat the odds and make your sale or acquisition a complete success.

Explores recent developments in matters relating to science, technology, globalisation and industrial performance of OECD and major non OECD countries, bringing together over 200 graphs.

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.