Chipmaker Microsemi Corp. has struck a deal to move its headquarters to Aliso Viejo.
The company, Orange County’s third-biggest chipmaker by sales, is expected to move its Irvine operations and some other personnel to Aliso Viejo.
Last week, Microsemi signed a nine-year lease for an entire four-story, 109,000-square-foot building at One Enterprise Drive.
The building is about half a mile from Aliso Viejo Town Center and overlooks the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road. The building previously served as the headquarters for drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, which was acquired in 2010.
Microsemi’s lease is effective immediately, according to tenant brokers with Cresa Partners of Orange County LP who worked on the deal.
One Enterprise is owned by San Francisco-based RREEF Funds LLC, a real estate investment unit of Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG.
Microsemi officials said last week that they expect employees to start moving to Aliso Viejo in phases starting as early as next month, though exact details haven’t been finalized.
It’s a sizeable expansion for the company, which counts a market value of about $1.8 billion and is estimated to have about 400 employees here. Microsemi has more than 2,600 employees companywide.
Its current headquarters is about 25,000 square feet. The company also has a chip plant in Garden Grove with some employees there set to move to Aliso Viejo.
Needs Room
• Headquarters: Irvine
• Founded: 1960 as Microsemiconductor Corp.; changed name in 1983
• Business: maker of chips for military, aerospace, consumer and indusrial uses
• 2010 revenue: $590 million
• Ticker symbol: MSCC (Nasdaq)
• Notable: Moving to bigger Aliso Viejo headquarters amid expected sales growth, acquisitions
The extra space is needed to handle internal growth as well as personnel brought on from several recent acquisitions, according to company officials.
Last year saw the company make its largest acquisition to date, a $430 million buy of Northern California’s Actel Corp.
Actel focuses on the aerospace industry and was a rival of Microsemi’s.
Microsemi also bought Bethesda, Md.-based Arxan Defense Systems and Atlanta’s VT Silicon for undisclosed terms late last year.
The company had been looking to bring local employees under one roof, according to officials.
Microsemi’s chips serve a variety of military, aerospace, consumer and industrial uses. Its products are built into satellites, digital televisions, X-ray body scanners and other devices.
Customers include Cisco Systems Inc., Boeing Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
The company had about $520 million in sales for the 12 months through October. Analysts project Microsemi to have some $800 million in revenue for the same period this year.
Microsemi is targeting yearly sales of $1 billion in the next few years, according to analysts.
The company’s been working out of its current headquarters—in an older office complex near John Wayne Airport—for about a decade. It moved there from Santa Ana.
The Aliso Viejo office should include research and engineering space, in addition to general office space.
“This was a unique situation,” said Cresa Managing Principal Sandy Kikerpill Leger, who worked on the lease with Cresa’s Kenneth Blye. “The transaction was right for them—they got an amazing deal.”
RREFF was represented by its Keith Walters as well as by CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Carol Trapani.
The total value of the lease is estimated to be $25 million to $30 million and is said to include more than a year and a half of free rent.
Landlord RREEF was able to make the deal after its last tenant, Valeant, ended its current lease, which was slated to run through the end of this year, according to brokerage materials.
Valeant signed a 10-year lease for One Enterprise Drive in 2006 when it moved its headquarters there from its longtime home in Costa Mesa.
In September, Valeant was acquired by Canada’s Biovail Corp., which took the Valeant name.
Valeant began putting chuncks of its new office back on the market for sublease starting in 2008.
Old Fluor HQ
It paid RREEF a reported $3.8 million in 2008 to restructure its lease to end at the conclusion of 2011. Prior to Valeant, the Aliso Viejo office was the headquarters of Fluor Corp., an engineering and construction company that moved its headquarters to Irving, Texas, in 2006. Fluor sold the building to RREEF for a reported $27.5 million.
