Canadian patent holding company WiLAN has sweetened its offer to acquire rival Mosaid Technologies, also a Canadian company, by 11 percent to $42 per share.
Mosaid's board rejected WiLAN's $38 cash-per-share offer last month, calling the offer "clearly inadequate and highly opportunistic."
WiLAN pointed out that the revised offer is a 38.6 percent premium to the average share price before the offer was made. WiLAN said it has no intention of further revising or extending the new offer.
Mosaid announced that it has advised shareholders not to take any action until further notice with regards to the increased unsolicited offer.
"Mosaid's special committee is discussing potential value-enhancing alternatives with third parties and will review, consider and evaluate WiLAN's bid in that context," Carl P. Schlachte, chairman of the board and special committee of Mosaid, said in a release. "Following the special committee's review, and before the expiry of WiLAN's increased offer, the board will provide a recommendation to shareholders."
Mosaid is certainly more valuable after recently acquiring Core Wireless and its portfolio of 400 patent families, consisting of approximately 2,000 wireless patents and patent applications originally filed by Nokia, 1,215 of which have been declared essential to 2G, 3G, and 4G standards, Mosaid said. The patents have remaining lives of 10 years, on average, and cover 49 different countries.
"We continue to believe that combining our two Ottawa-based firms is a unique and exciting opportunity to create a global IP licensing powerhouse that combines the talent of two great teams. We expect to retain the vast majority of Mosaid staff upon successful completion of this transaction," said Jim Skippen, chairman and CEO, in a statement. "Acquiring Mosaid fits perfectly within our long-term growth strategy and our commitment to increasing shareholder value. The acquisition of Mosaid remains accretive to WiLAN's adjusted earnings per share in fiscal 2012 and has the unanimous support of the WiLAN board."
WiLAN, considered by many to be a patent troll, filed a patent suit last month against Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and other high-profile companies charging that their products infringe on one patent that relates to CDMA and HSPA technology and another relating to Wi-Fi and LTE.
For more:
- see this WiLAN release
- see this Mosaid release
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