Qualcomm on Friday once again extended the deadline for the completion of its proposed merger of NXP Semiconductors valued at approximately $44 billion, with the firm pushing it back for a week and setting the new completion date to April 13. The Dutch firm’s stock is still declining and has been following that trend since late February when Qualcomm beefed up its offer while it was still fighting off a hostile takeover attempt on the part of Broadcom. Around 16.1-percent of all outstanding NXP shares have been tendered as of yesterday, whereas 14.8-percent of them were considered as such last week, before the announcement of Qualcomm’s previous extension. NXP was trading at just over $114 as of Friday noon PST, whereas Qualcomm’s bid stands at $127.50 per share, representing a double-digit return for NXP’s investors.
Neither NXP nor Qualcomm signaled any intention to walk away from the deal whose fate is becoming more uncertain by the day, with rising trade-related tensions between the United States and China making Beijing less keen on greenlighting the consolidation, as has been widely reported in recent weeks. President Donald Trump’s decision to prevent a Broadcom-Qualcomm merger likely made China even more resistant to approving the NXP deal as a Broadcom-owned Qualcomm could have posed a smaller R&D threat to Huawei than an independent one currently does, some industry watchers believe, with that sentiment also being expressed by one of Treasury Department’s national security panels which previously advised the President to block Broadcom’s advances.
China is the last of nine regulators with jurisdiction over Qualcomm’s proposed NXP acquisition that has yet to approve the move. Previous reports suggested Beijing is seeking more protections for local manufacturers but details on the matter remain scarce. As was the case with other the eight antitrust watchdogs that inspected the consolidation proposal, China is allowed to review the deal and ask for concessions before approving it or outright reject it by virtue of the fact that both Qualcomm and NXP do large-scale business in its domestic market, largely due to the ubiquitous nature of their technologies such as mobile chips, modems, and NFC solutions.