Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor
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Pat Hindle is responsible for editorial content, article review and special industry reporting for Microwave Journal magazine and its web site in addition to social media and special digital projects. Prior to joining the Journal, Mr. Hindle held various technical and marketing positions throughout New England, including Marketing Communications Manager at M/A-COM (Tyco Electronics), Product/QA Manager at Alpha Industries (Skyworks), Program Manager at Raytheon and Project Manager/Quality Engineer at MIT. Mr. Hindle graduated from Northeastern University - Graduate School of Business Administration and holds a BS degree from Cornell University in Materials Science Engineering.

RF/microwave Industry Consolidation Update

February 8, 2015

1 Comment

We extensively covered the RF/microwave industry consolidation in 2014 and many wondered if it would continue into 2015. Well, the answer is a big “yes” as in just over a month into the year we have seen the acquisition of Mesuro by Focus Microwaves, Miteq by L-3 Narda, TE Connectivity’s Enterprise, Telecom and Wireless businesses by CommScope and Exelis (previously ITT) by Harris. Even Intel joined the party and acquired Lantiq, a supplier of broadband access and home networking technologies.

Mesuro is a spin off from Cardiff University and a developer of device modeling, characterization and optimization test solutions so matches up well with what Focus does in the load pull market and device characterization market. They specialize in active load pull systems using the term waveform engineering. L-3 Narda has rumored to be in talks with Miteq for a long time so that was not unexpected and also matches up well with the L-3 Narda business. CommScope’s purchase of TE Connectivity’s businesses was very large and they paid $3 billion in cash. The combined company will be close to $6 billion in sales. Exelis, while having some overlap with Harris, does extend their products in the military market making them even larger with a broader portfolio of products.

Last year, the majority of acquisitions and mergers in our industry were semiconductor companies, so I expected the trend to continue in other sectors such as software and test/measurement. However, it seems to have touched several sectors now. After years of uncertainty, it seems like many companies have a lot of cash on hand as they were reluctant to spend. This allows these companies to have the ability to acquire others or makes them targets to be acquired.

I think the acquisitions will continue at least through the first half of this year and keep an eye out for a flurry of activity prior to IMS like last year. I see many advantages to test/measurement companies combining with software/modeling companies to provide full solutions to users. We will see if that prediction comes true.