Silicon Labs and Sigma Designs Inc. announced the completion of Silicon Labs’ acquisition of Sigma Designs’ Z-Wave business, including a team of approximately 100 employees, for $240 million in an all-cash transaction.
Combining Z-Wave’s mesh technology and product interoperability focus with Silicon Labs’ multiprotocol expertise gives smart home developers access to a large, varied network of ecosystems and to a full range of end-node technology options that open the door to millions of potential smart home users, the company stated in a press release. The strategic acquisition complements Silicon Labs’ comprehensive wireless hardware and software portfolio for the smart home, which today includes Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth and proprietary protocols.
“Adding Z-Wave to Silicon Labs’ extensive IoT connectivity portfolio allows us to deliver a unified vision for the wireless technologies underpinning the smart home market,” said Tyson Tuttle, CEO of Silicon Labs. “A secure, interoperable customer experience is at the heart of how smart home products are designed, deployed and managed. Our smart home vision is one where multiple technologies work securely together, where any device using any of our connectivity options easily joins the home network, and where security updates and feature upgrades occur automatically.”
Raoul Wijgergangs, vice president and general manager of Z-Wave, said, “Together, Silicon Labs and the Z-Wave Alliance and its ecosystems will continue to advance the Z-Wave technology roadmap, delivering innovations that engage millions of smart home product users. Z-Wave is a proven, broadly deployed technology that just reached the milestone of 100 million devices in the market. The acquisition will drive collaboration and expand access to a diverse ecosystem network of partners including Amazon, Alarm.com, ADT, Samsung SmartThings, Yale, Vivint, Google Home and Comcast.”
Elias Nader, interim president and CEO, and CFO of Sigma Designs, said, “We are pleased Sigma’s shareholders overwhelmingly approved the sale of our Z-Wave business to Silicon Labs. This asset sale is a significant milestone in the process to return capital to our shareholders as soon as feasible.”
Silicon Labs expects the acquisition to be accretive to 2018 non-GAAP earnings.