Micron Buys Stake in Qimonda Venture

Micron will purchase Qimonda's stake in Inotera Memories for $400 million.

Author:: Joseph Woelfel
Publish date:: Oct 13, 2008 4:35 AM EDT

Qimonda

(QI)

said Monday it reached an agreement to sell its 35.6% stake in Inotera Memories Inc., a joint venture with Taiwan's

Nanya Technology

, to

Micron Technology

(MU) - Get Report

Micron will purchase Qimonda's stake in Inotera, a Taiwanese DRAM memory manufacturer, for $400 million in cash in two instalments. Qimonda will receive $200 million for about one-half its holding in about one week, the company said in a statement Monday.

Qimonda said it expects to record a one-time book loss on its investment in Inotera of about 300 million euros.

Germany's

Infineon Technologies

(IFX)

, which owns about 77.5% of Qimonda, said it had held talks with a number of third parties on possibly selling all or a portion of its stake in Qimonda, but the outcome of these talks was uncertain amid weak market conditions,

Reuters

reports.

Micron said it has obtained $285 million in term loan financing commitments to help fund the purchase.

In the current Qimonda and Nanya partnership, Inotera operates two 300-millimeter wafer fabrication facilities producing a total of 120,000 wafers a month. Under the agreement, Micron said it will acquire access to half of the total manufacturing capacity of Inotera, with the other half allocated to Nanya.