WiFi silicon supplier Atheros Communications is picking up new powerline networking skills as it reached a deal to acquire Intellon. Under the terms of the agreement, Atheros will acquire the powerline silicon vendor in a stock and cash transaction valued at roughly $244 million, or $7.30 per share based on its closing price as of last Friday.
As it announced its Intellon acquisition, Atheros also raised its earnings estimates for this current quarter. Atheros said it upped its third-quarter earnings outlook from 35 cents to 39 cents and revenue from $145 to $150 million. Previously, Atheros forecast earnings of 29 cents to 31 cents and $129 million to $134.6 million in revenue.
Both companies bring something to the service provider's ‘no new wires' home networking drive. Atheros is best known as one of the early WiFi developers, while Intellon was an early developer of powerline communications technology. Apart from smaller telcos such as Consolidated Communications, which is leveraging WiFi, the primary ‘no new wire' modes have been HomePNA or MoCA, both of which leverage existing phone wires or coax. In Europe, telcos have been a bit more open to using powerline and WiFi due to the lack of available coax in homes. To date, Intellon said it has shipped more than 40 million chipsets and finished more than 50 service provider deployments of powerline communications technology.
Of course, now that the marriage has been announced, the fun part of integrating Intellon into Atheros' fold begins.
For more:
- see the Atheros release here
- Wall Street Journal has this article
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