Intrinsity Acquisition

Apple made its third semiconductor company acquisition in a stealthy manner by not making any public announcements. The alert online community discovered via some careful sleuthing that Austin, TX based Intrinsity Inc's employees had started to work for Apple from the beginning of April 2010. SEC filings made by Apple for its quarterly earnings report on April 20, 2010 indicated that Apple spent around $325 million for business acquisitions. Though Intrinsity's name wasn't publicly disclosed, a knowledge of Apple's recent acquisitions indicated that the total amount was spent on Quattro Wireless, LaLa and Intrinsity
. Quattro Wireless was purchased for $275 million and TechCrunch had previously suggested that LaLa was purchased for $17 million. Based on this, some infer that Apple spent less than $50 million in order to grab Intrinsity's tech and employees. However, the NYTimes report confirming Apple's acquisition quoted analyst Tom Halfhill in suggesting a purchase price of $121 million. The analyst contends that that Apple may not have paid all the money at once or 100% in cash. That, he says, may account for the lower estimates that people derive from Apple's publicly disclosed expenditures. This is very much within the realms of possibility, but people suggesting that Apple paid less than $50 million for Intrinsity say that this doesn't take into account the financial state of Intrinsity in the few months preceding the acquisition. Let us take a brief detour to trace Intrinsity's history and analyze this further.