Newport Beach chipmaker Mindspeed Technologies Inc. said on Thursday it sold $5.3 million more worth of patents.
Other terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Investors sent Mindspeed’s shares up 4% Thursday to a recent market value of $248 million.
The sale follows earlier efforts by Mindspeed to raise cash. Mindspeed had about $34 million in cash and short-term assets at the end of the June quarter.
In July the company completed a $10 million patent sale.
In total, some $13 million in patent sales are expected for the three months through August, the company said.
“We are excited to further bolster our liquidity position with these additional legacy patent sales, which put the company in its strongest net cash position in over five years,” said Bret Johnsen, Mindspeed’s chief financial officer.
The patent sales echo those of neighboring Conexant Systems Inc., a Newport Beach maker of chips that go into office equipment, digital picture frames and PC speakers.
Conexant spun out from Mindspeed in 2003.
In the past year, the company has done patent sales, stock sales and even entertained selling some of its land in order to pay down debt and clean up its balance sheet.
Mindspeed makes networking chips that convert phone calls to digital signals so they can be sent over fiber-optic lines.
Its biggest customers are large Chinese networking companies, including China Unicom Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co., as well as Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.
It’s set to report results for the September quarter on Nov. 1.
Wall Street analysts, on average, are expecting Mindspeed to post profits of $9 million, up from breaking even during the same period a year earlier, on sales of $51 million, up 47% from the year-ago quarter.
