Western Digital just bought a bunch of memory cards. The storage giant just announced that it has agreed to buy SanDisk Corp for about $19 billion. This comes after speculation that SanDisk was shopping for a buyer.
The deal values SanDisk at $86.50 a share, which is a 15% premium on the previous day’s closing price, giving the company a value of $15.4 billion. SanDisk is currently up 4.78% in pre-market trading.
This deal brings together two of the largest storage companies. In many ways, SanDisk, with its deep investment in flash memory chips represents a future without the spinning disk hard drives of Western Digital. Yet despite early explosive growth, SanDisk as of late reported results that have lagged behind expectations. Likewise, Western Digital has watched its core business slip away as the industry moves towards flash memory.
SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra is expected to join the Western Digital board upon the closing of the deal. Western Digital CEO Steve Milligan will continue in that role.
