After a few weeks of speculation, Altera has apparently walked away from a very generous acquisition offer from Intel. Altera makes field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors, a field Intel does not play in, and it would have been a whole new market for Intel, which really needs a growth story these days.

Bloomberg reported that Altera walked away from an offer of $54 per share this week, a major premium over Altera’s stock price, which was stalled in the mid-$30 range for more than three years. It shot up to $43 per share on news of the Intel merger talk.

Gus Richard, an analyst at Northland Securities Inc., summed it up best to Bloomberg: “What are they thinking? They’re going to come under a huge amount of pressure to take that offer. Earnings aren’t going to be that great.”

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