Soitec (Euronext Paris), a world leader in designing and manufacturing innovative semiconductor materials, and MBDA, announce the joint acquisition of Dolphin Integration. Dolphin Integration is an industry recognized provider of semiconductor design, silicon IP and SoC (System-On-Chip) solutions for low power applications. Headquartered in Grenoble, Dolphin Integration was founded in 1985. It currently employs 155 people, including 130 design engineers. For the fiscal year ended March 31th, 2018, the company generated revenues of 17 million Euros.

The joint venture formed by Soitec and MBDA acquires Dolphin Integration, including all employees. The resulting ownership of the joint venture is as follows: Soitec at 60% and MBDA at 40%.

The transaction was authorized today by the Commercial Court of Grenoble. It comes as a prompt and positive outcome of Dolphin Integration insolvency proceedings. The company went into receivership on July 24, 2018.

Soitec brings its engineered substrates expertise and unique low-power design methodology (body biasing) to accelerate Dolphin Integration design activities in low-power electronic devices, where a growing number of critical chips are built on FD-SOI technology. In addition, Soitec will strengthen Dolphin Integration’s position within the entire semiconductor ecosystem, to develop and promote products and services in several strategic markets, including mobile devices and infrastructure, data centers, and space and industrial applications.

MBDA, a strategic customer of Dolphin Integration for defense applications since 2004, strengthens its existing industrial collaboration and long-term commercial pipeline for ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and SoC (System on Chip) products. With the support of MBDA, Dolphin Integration will be able to advance its positions in aerospace and defense design.

Soitec and MBDA together committed to a financial investment of around 6 million Euros including the acquisition of most of Dolphin Integration’s assets, the payment of certain liabilities and a significant cash injection to finance Dolphin Integration’s working capital requirements.

Soitec and MBDA are confident in their ability to turnaround the financial position of Dolphin Integration. Dolphin Integration is expected to be fully consolidated into Soitec’s financial statements as of September 2018.

“Dolphin Integration represents a strategic opportunity for Soitec to reinforce a full IP and service offering related to energy efficient solutions for chip design on FD-SOI. This is a major differentiating factor for FD-SOI and a key accelerator of FD-SOI adoption in major market segments,” highlighted Paul Boudre, CEO of Soitec.

“MBDA investment will strengthen the French defense industrial base since it will provide Dolphin Integration with a more stable flow of defense related revenues and a closer technological collaboration that will allow it to enhance the access of its specialized microelectronics offering to the entire French and European defense industry,” said Antoine Bouvier, CEO of MBDA.

About Dolphin Integration  

Created in 1985, Dolphin Integration is an integrated circuit design center and exporter of integrated circuits and components (virtual, analog and digital) for high volume manufacturing. As a major contributor to the emergence of a microelectronics design and following the explosive growth trends in semiconductor design, Dolphin Integration’s mission is to become a global player within the specialized market of service design and optimization of integrated circuits for very low energy consumption. The company’s products focus on serving the needs of dynamic consumer and industrial markets such as IoT, mobile, and automotive, as well as those of the European defense design industry.

About Soitec

Soitec (Euronext, Tech 40 Paris) is a world leader in designing and manufacturing innovative semiconductor materials. The company uses its unique technologies and semiconductor expertise to serve the electronics markets. With more than 3,000 patents worldwide, Soitec’s strategy is based on disruptive innovation to answer its customers’ needs for high performance, energy efficiency and cost competitiveness. Soitec has manufacturing facilities, R&D centers and offices in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. Soitec and Smart Cut are registered trademarks of Soitec.

About MBDA

MBDA is the only European group capable of designing and producing missiles and missile systems that correspond to the full range of current and future operational needs of the three armed for ces (land, sea and air).

With a significant presence in five European countries and within the USA, in 2017 MBDA achieved revenue of 3.1 billion euros with an order book of 16.8 billion euros. With more than 90 armed forces customers in the world, MBDA is a world leader in missiles and missile systems. In total, the group offers a range of 45 missile systems and countermeasures products already in operational service and more than 15 others currently in development. MBDA is jointly owned by Airbus (37.5%), BAE Systems (37.5%), and Leonardo (25%).

Fonte: comunicato MBDA/Soitec