A Texas company is buying Irvine’s Southland Micro Systems Inc., a privately held maker of memory boards for computers, for $23 million.
Austin-based Staktek Holdings Inc., which makes stackable memory modules, is set to pay about $18 million for Southland and take on $5 million in debt.
The deal is expected to close in a month.
The price likely reflects a recent downturn among memory products makers.
Southland Micro had yearly sales of about $160 million in 2001, the last year the company was on the Business Journal’s list of the largest privately held companies here.
In the late 1990s, Southland had yearly sales of $200 million.
Southland and other companies that buy memory chips and assemble them onto circuit boards have suffered in the past year as prices have fallen off dramatically amid a glut in chips.
Southland Micro has about 80 workers in Irvine, where it designs and makes memory boards used to build and upgrade computers.
Chief Executive John Meehan is set to join Staktek as executive vice president, the company said.
Meehan, a onetime commodities broker with Monex International in Newport Beach, started Southland in 1987.
Staktek had a recent market value of about $144 million and yearly sales of about $40 million.
