II-VI Inc. has signed agreements to acquire two semiconductor manufacturing firms in order to further position the company in the vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) market. The semiconductor laser company has agreed to buy EpiWorks Inc., a maker of compound semiconductor wafers for electronic and photonic device applications, and Anadigics Inc., a high volume foundry that produces 6-inch gallium arsenide (GaAs) wafers. II-VI will pay $110 million for the acquisitions in cash and both are expected to close within the next 60 days.
Under the agreement, II-VI will take control of EpiWorks’ 25,000 square foot, Class 1000 cleanroom epi foundry that will lead to a significant expansion of the company’s product portfolio. II-VI says EpiWorks portfolio meshes well with the competencies of the company as an engineered materials company. The Anadigics acquisition will allow II-VI to add capacity more quickly and economically than building a new facility and II-VI says controlling a scalable infrastructure is critical for extending the company’s laser enterprise product portfolio.
Both acquisitions will also boost II-VI’s VCSELs growth in a variety of applications including consumer electronics, data centers, sensing, medical and industrial markets. II-VI claims the VCSELs market is forecast to grow greater than 20 percent per year. According to II-VI, VCSELs address the need for increasingly human-machine interfaces such as gesture recognition in consumer electronics products as well as the growing demand for shore-reach high-speed optical connectivity in data centers.
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