Multinational technology firm Hewlett-Packard is in advanced talks to buy Cray, an American supercomputer manufacturer, Bloomberg said. The deal announcement is expected to take place this week. However, no final agreements have been made and it might take a while, sources close to the matter said.
Hewlett-Packard acquiring Cray would allow the company to strengthen its position in the supercomputers market, especially competing against IBM. In fact, the acquisition could become Hewlett-Packard’s biggest deal since its acquisition of Nimble Storage for $1 billion, according to Bloomberg data. Nimble Storage is a predictive flash storage technology company based in California.
A spokesperson from HP declined to comment on Cray acquisition. Previously, Hewlett-Packard completed a spinoff and merger of its enterprise service with Computer Sciences, an American multinational firm that provides IT and professional services.
In the past year, Cray’s shares have risen 11 percent with a current market valuation of approximately $1.2 billion.
Cray shares opened at $28.92 on Tuesday. It has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13, a current ratio of 3.33 and a quick ratio of 2.62, according to Mayfield Recorder. It had a revenue of $71.55 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $70.67 million.
In May, Cray also signed a deal with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It is an American multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the US Department of Energy. Bloomberg said that the deal came in an effort to build a $600 million system for research on ‘artificial intelligence, weather, subatomic structures, genomics and physics’.