PCFormat Forum Archive

OCZ Plunges 77%: Toshiba Offers to Buy Assets, Plans Bankruptcy Filing

By Tiernan Ray

Shares of solid-state drive technology vendor OCZ Technology Group (OCZ) remain frozen since 9 am, Eastern this morning, and the reason came across the transom just a short while ago: The company has received an offer from Toshiba (6502JP) to purchase all the company’s assets in a bankruptcy proceeding.

OCZ said it believes all the “material terms have been agreed to,” though there are a number of conditions that have to be satisfied, such as retention of employees. OCZ would file for bankruptcy right after agreeing to a deal, but it would also file even if it doesn’t reach agreement with Toshiba, it said.

As part of the discussions, creditor Hercules Technology Growth Capital has taken control of OCZ’s assets on deposit at Silicon Valley Bank and Wells Fargo, OCZ said.

OCZ shares are set to resume trading at 2:30 pm, Eastern time. The stock was at 63 cents before the halt. Shares are down 67% so far this year.

OCZ’s business has been crumbling for over a year now, in part because of a lack of adequate supply of flash memory chips with which to produce its products. The company a year ago cut nearly a third of its workforce, and proceeded through several quarters of weaker-than-expected results and revenue restatements. Revenue this fiscal year ending in February is expected to fall by 55% to $149 million, where once analysts had predicted over a billion dollars.

The stock traded as high as $10.94 at one time, and last year was talked of as likely to be bought out by hard-drive maker Seagate Technology (STX).

Update: Shares have resumed trading and are down 15 cents, or 24%, at 48 cents.

Update 2: Shares have continued their rapid descent and are now down 48 cents, or almost 77%, at 15 cents.

StarBound wrote:Wonder if I can get it at a 77% discount now that the company is going belly up.

OCZ is filing for Bankruptcy, however this is a technical bankruptcy, meaning Business continues as usual with the difference that OCZ will become part of Toshiba. The past year OCZ has had a very hard time securing NAND flash modules making their volume shipments of SSDs low. With Toshiba backing them, that at least will be one of the problems that is going to be solved. I also just learned from OCZ that Warranty procedures will continue as normal. This is a technical bankruptcy.