Samsung announced its Q4 2020 earnings earlier today. During its conference call with investors, the company mentioned that it is eying more mergers and acquisitions over the next few years to fend off challenges from rival brands and to beef up its future growth.
The South Korean tech giant's CFO, Choi Yoon-ho, said that the company will actively use its cash to expand its production facilities and for M&A (merger and acquisition) deals. He said, “We have been very carefully reviewing our M&A options in the past 10 years continuously. Although it is difficult to specify when we would forge the deal due to global uncertainties, based on our preparations, we think positively significant M&A deals in the next three years.”
The company's last major acquisition happened in 2016 when it picked up US-based audio and automotive giant HARMAN International Industries for $8 billion. Industry insiders expect Samsung's next major M&A to come from the semiconductor sector. Major chip firms announced major acquisitions last year, including Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of ARM Holdings, AMD's $35 billion acquisition of Xilinx, and SK Hynix's $9 billion acquisition of Intel's SSD business.
Samsung is currently the number one brand in the DRAM and NAND segments, and it is expected to acquire semiconductor firms in foundry and logic chip sectors. The company had announced its plan to become the world's largest semiconductor firm by 2030 by investing $115 billion. It is also considering building a $10 billion chip facility in Austin, Texas in the US to fabricate 3nm chips. However, it said during the conference call that nothing has been finalized yet.
