Samsung offers to purchase BlackBerry

In the surprise news of the day, Samsung recently made an offer to buy BlackBerry for $7.5 billion. Reuters is reporting that Samsung set the initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share, which translates to a premiumof 38 percent to 60 percent over the current trading price.

So what would Samsung want with such a failing company? According to Reuters, it’s all about the patents. BlackBerry owns roughly 44,000 patents, worth approximately $1.43 billion in net book value. However, a lot of analysts think they are worth much more. Unfortunately BlackBerry isn’t interested in selling only the patents, so Samsung would need to buy the whole company in order to obtain them.

The other problem is getting approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), as well as the Canadian government. Samsung does think that if they were to acquire less than 100 percent of the company, the CFIUS approval process would be much easier. However, Samsung doesn’t think they could “accomplish its strategic objectives” without owning 100 percent.

BlackBerry said they have “not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry.”

This could get very interesting so stay tuned.

source: Reuters

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