Lake Forest-based chipmaker Newport Media Inc. has secured a $10 million loan from a pair of lenders.
The company plans to use the proceeds from Farmington, Conn.-based Horizon Technology Finance Corp. and Bridge Bank in San Jose to support its global growth plan. It has targeted growing markets in Asia and Latin America with its chip sets.
Newport Media launched in 2005, and it has raised some $80 million to date. Prior investors include Palo Alto-based Pinnacle Ventures, Oak Investment Partners in Westport, Conn., and Bay Area firms Benchmark Capital, Venrock, Global Catalyst Partners and DAG Ventures LLC.
It makes what’s called a system-on-a-chip that allows mobile TV and digital audio applications to run on cell phones and other devices. The company chalked up some notable design wins over the past year from some of the world’s largest mobile phone makers, including Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola and ZTE.
Newport Media is known as a fabless chipmaker, since it designs chips but doesn’t operate factories, known as wafer fabrication plants. It instead hires contractor manufacturers, typically in Asia, to produce their chips.
The company has China offices in Shanghai and Shenzhen, a design center in Egypt, and other locations in Japan and South Korea.
It recently hit a sales milestone, surpassing more than 30 million units shipped.
The company, which does not disclose revenue, was the 15th-largest chipmaker in Orange County based on employment in 2012, with 50 local workers and 200 companywide, according to Business Journal research.
The company has close ties with chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc. in Newport Beach.
Chief Executive Mohy Abdelgany headed up an Irvine business unit of Woburn, Mass.-based Skyworks Solutions Inc., which included Conexant’s former wireless chip unit, before starting Newport Media.
Dwight Decker, a former chief executive of Conexant, is on Newport Media’s board.
Abdelgany joined Rockwell Semiconductor Systems Inc., which later became Conexant, in the mid-1990s. He left in 2002 to work at Skyworks’ Irvine operations.
Netlist Offering
Irvine-based computer-memory-products maker Netlist Inc. plans to raise $1.3 million through a public offering that will be used for “general corporate purposes.”
The company hired Ascendiant Capital Markets LLC in Irvine to conduct the transaction, which calls for some 1.6 million to 2.2 million common shares to be sold, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Netlist has burned through cash over the past year as it battled patent litigation, which has tempered adoption of the company’s newly released product line. Its shares have fallen steadily from above the $4 mark in February, and closed 2012 at less than $1 for a market value of about $22 million.
The company makes a range of memory boards with specialized controller chips to manage server memory.
Last month it garnered a favorable ruling from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when the agency rejected claims brought by a competitor that it had infringed on patents.
The ruling could affect a lawsuit that was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California by the competitor—Newark, Calif.-based Smart Modular Technologies Inc.
Smart Modular’s dispute with Netlist involves patents related to Netlist’s recently introduced HyperCloud products.
The products are designed to handle large memory capacity and are designed to improve performance by 25% compared to the industry standard. The HyperCloud product has been adopted in servers from New York-based IBM Corp., which helped Netlist during its years of development.
Netlist lost $8.8 million through the first nine months of the year on $30.9 million in revenue. It had $33.6 million in losses from 2009 to 2011.
Mindspeed Wins
Newport Beach-based Mindspeed Technologies Inc. recently scored two design wins for its chips geared for small cell base stations.
The company said it is partnering with East Brunswick, N.J.-based Aricent Group and Contela Inc. in South Korea to power voice-over-LTE (long-term evolution) applications in small base stations.
It also is working with Hillsboro, Ore.-based Radisys Corp. and SK Telesys in Seoul, South Korea, to create and implement similar technology on its systems-on-a-chip.
Mindspeed makes chips for routers, switches and other networking gear.
Some company watchers have pegged Mindspeed for a turnaround, due to its LTE gains in South Korea late in the year.
The design wins, coupled with the release of Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy 3S—both of which heralded the arrival of the much-hyped 4G LTE network—prompted the company to raise its revenue outlook in the December quarter.
It now projects sales of $37.5 million to $38.5 million for the quarter, up from prior guidance of $36.5 million to $37.5 million. It also said it would be profitable in the current quarter.
Mindspeed implemented a restructuring plan last year as it integrated U.K.-based chipmaker Picochip Ltd. under its operations. Mindspeed acquired Picochip about a year ago for $51.8 million and up to $25 million in additional benchmark payments.
