Investors have recently been pressuring Qualcomm to spin off its chip business, citing increasing competition in the industry as one of the reasons why the company needs to do this but so far they have not been able to convince Qualcomm. The U.S. based chipmaker’s executive chairman Paul Jacobs has said today that despite all that pressure from investors Qualcomm currently has no plans to spin off its chip business.
Jacobs didn’t completely rule out the option of this ever happening, saying that Qualcomm will continue to evaluate its options and that the possibility exists that situation might change in the future to warrant such a move.
Speaking on the sidelines of an American Chamber of Commerce event in Seoul, Jacobs said that Qualcomm’s board has looked at spinning off the chips business for years but they still hold the view that the “synergies of having the businesses together outweighs the dissynergies.”
It’s not like Qualcomm hasn’t been criticized for holding on to the chipmaking business, back in April hedge fund Jana Partners recommended that the company should spin off this business from its patent-licensing business to create more value for shareholders, going so far as to say that Qualcomm’s chipmaking business is “essentially worthless.”
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