Woot woot!
Test and measurement firm Keysight firm outbid rival Viavi to acquire Spirent Thursday with a last-minute cash offer of £1.16 billion ($1.46 billion).
Viavi had previously put in a bid of £1.01 billion ($1.28 billion) for Spirent on March 5. UK-based Spirent has now passed on that in favor of the offer from California-based Keysight.
“I believe that Keysight is rightly concerned the combined Viavi-Spirent could represent a threat to Keysight’s growth prospects as mobile infrastructure investment returns (likely in 18-24 months with 5G-Advanced and then 6G preparations),” commented ThinkAvid principal analyst Roy Chua in an email to Fierce.
Well they nipped that in the bud, didn’t they?
Chua noted that Keysight is a much larger company than either Spirent or Viavi.
“Keysight and Spirent actually have more overlapping product lines than Viavi and Spirent,” he said. “In recent years, Spirent has strong established its presence and thought leadership in hot areas like 5G, data center switching, and SD-WAN/cloud apps/L4-7 testing.”
Clearly, the thought of all sweet, sweet T&M lucre tipped Spirent’s board Keysight’s way.
