AVX Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers of ceramics and metal capacitors found in electronics, has agreed to acquire Ethertronics, whose advanced antenna systems are installed in everything from connected cars to medical equipment. As part of the deal, the company is paying $150 million in cash and debt.
Ethertronics supplies both passive and active antenna systems, precisely engineered to suppress local interference or changes in ground planes. The company’s chips plot out radiation patterns every millisecond and then its algorithms sample and switch between them to optimize for reliability, range and efficiency based on the surrounding environment.
Ethertronics retails isolated magnetic dipole antennas for many different applications like personal computers and phones. It has expanded into the market for connected cars, which share their location and other information with each other and the cloud. The company also built an advanced test chamber specifically for the automotive applications of its chips.
For AVX, the acquisition expands its product portfolio, which is dominated by passive components like tantalum and ceramic capacitors. Ethertronics, which is privately owned, generated around $90 million of revenue over the last year and employs around 700 people. The company was founded in 2000 and is based in San Diego, California.
“The addition of Ethertronics is an exciting opportunity for AVX as we expand our extensive electronic product offering into a new arena,” said John Sarvis, chief executive officer of AVX, which is a division of Japan's Kyocera, in a statement. “The combination of AVX and Ethertronics offers exciting growth potential for the years ahead.”