Shares of Aliso Viejo-based QLogic Corp., a maker of electronics for data storage networks, rose Tuesday on Wall Street chatter that it’s a possible takeover target.
The stock closed up 2% in on a recent market value of $2.2 billion.
According to a blog posting on financial news Web site Barrons.com, the company may have “hired advisers following takeover interest.”
A spokeswoman for QLogic declined to comment.
QLogic is a perennial subject of buyout chatter. In the past few years, the company has been rumored to have had several suitors, including EMC Corp., Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc., among others.
Its shares saw a brief run-up last May amid Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp.’s $764 million hostile takeover bid for QLogic rival Emulex Corp. of Costa Mesa.
The takeover battle stretched for months and ended with Broadcom walking away from the deal.
The competitive landscape for Emulex and QLogic is shifting with an up-and-coming technology that promises to bridge faster, specialized data networks with cheaper, everyday networks of servers and desktop computers.
Both companies have been competing to rack up design wins for the technology, known as fibre channel over Ethernet. The technology is expected to start taking hold in the next few years.
