A couple of major M&A deals that involve some of San Diego’s biggest tech companies are in the works. We’ve got the details, along with the rest of our Monday morning roundup.
—San Diego-based Websense (NASDAQ: [[ticker:WBSN]]), which provides Internet security software that companies use to limit employees’ access to business-related websites, has retained Frank Quattrone’s Qatalyst Partners to explore the idea of putting itself up for sale. The trial balloon was floated last week in The Wall Street Journal, which said the San Diego Web-filtering company could be worth about $1 billion in a sale.
—Kishore Seendripu, the chairman and founding CEO of Carlsbad, CA-based MaxLinear, told investors and analysts at the Roth Capital Partners small cap growth conference that he expects annual sales will continue to grow between 30 percent and 50 percent over the next three years. MaxLinear is a fabless wireless chip design company that went public just over a year ago.
—The two-day Health 2.0 Spring Fling conference that begins today in San Diego will focus on three themes: making health care cheaper; the evolution of healthcare research; and prevention, wellness, exercise, and food. Officials from the West Wireless Health Institute in San Diego are set to make presentations on new models for care delivery, new technologies that cut costs, and alternate funding models tailored for a faster and lower cost approach to health technology innovation.
—San Diego’s Maxwell Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MXWL]]) is finally beginning to show growth in its sales of ultracapacitors, after spending more than a decade trying to develop the global market for the rechargeable energy storage devices. Maxwell CEO David Schramm attributed Maxwell’s increasing ultracapacitor sales to wind turbines and automobiles in a presentation to analysts and investors last week at the Roth Capital Partners conference.
—Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi has joined the strategic advisory board at San Diego-based On-Ramp Wireless. The startup has been developing wireless network technology to connect very large networks, such as electric utility “smart grids.”
—San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies signed a joint venture agreement with China’s Ningbo Shentong Group to develop and market Fallbrook’s continuously variable planetary (CVP) transmissions for electric-powered passenger cars and light trucks. Fallbrook says the China-based joint venture will initially focus on developing the market for Fallbrook’s NuVinci CVP transmissions and electric vehicle drive train systems in China.
—Shareholders of San Jose, CA-based Atheros Communications voted Friday to approve San Diego-based Qualcomm’s $3.1 billion buyout offer. The deal, which ranks as Qualcomm’s biggest acquisition, is expected to be completed during the first half of this year.
