Micron Closed Acquisition of 100% of Elpida's Equity

Micron Technology, Inc. and Elpida Memory, Inc. trustees announced the closing of Micron’s acquisition of 100% of Elpida’s equity, pursuant to a Sponsor Agreement entered into on July 2, 2012 in connection with Elpida’s corporate reorganization proceedings conducted under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo District Court.

In a related transaction, Micron also announced the completion of its acquisition of a 24% share of Rexchip Electronics Corporation from Powerchip Technology Corporation and certain of its affiliates. The transactions will be recorded for accounting purposes as being effective at 11:59PM, Tokyo time, on July 31, 2013.

Elpida’s assets include a 300mm DRAM fabrication facility located in Hiroshima, Japan; an approximate 65% ownership interest in Rexchip, whose assets include a 300mm DRAM fabrication facility located in Taiwan; and a 100% ownership interest in Akita Elpida Memory, Inc., whose assets include an assembly and test facility located in Akita, Japan. Together with the Rexchip shares acquired from Powerchip, Micron will control approximately 89% of Rexchip’s outstanding shares and 100% of Rexchip product supply. The manufacturing assets of Elpida and Rexchip together can produce more than 185,000 300mm wafers per month, which represents an approximate 45% increase in Micron’s current manufacturing capacity.

Using its technologies, Elpida has built a presence in mobile DRAM, targeting mobile phones and tablets. Micron is a leader in delivering enterprise DRAM solutions for networking and servers as well as offering a product portfolio in NAND flash memory and NOR. Combining the two complementary product portfolios will further strengthen Micron’s position in the memory market and enable it to provide customers with a more complete set of solutions.

"We are pleased to bring together Elpida with Micron to form the pure-play memory company. This combination will result in enhanced R&D and manufacturing scale, significant cost and production synergies and a stronger memory product portfolio to provide solutions to our customers," said Micron CEO Mark Durcan.

Yukio Sakamoto, CEO, president and co-trustee, Elpida, said: "This transaction is a strong testament to the value of Elpida’s technologies, products and people, and it will result in a combined organization that can best serve customers with broader memory solutions, strength and scale."

Effective with the closing, Sakamoto announced his resignation from Elpida. Micron and Elpida announced that Yoshitaka Kinoshita will replace Sakamoto as the president, representative director and business trustee of Elpida and become the president of Micron Japan.

"I want to personally thank Sakamoto-san for his strong leadership of Elpida and for his efforts in helping bring Elpida and Micron together. I look forward to working with Kinoshita-san as we seek to strengthen our combined teams," said Durcan.