Romaine Bostick:
So with regards to just the general makeup of your business now, within the context of some of the geopolitics that have been taking place, do you see any sort of detailed risk to being a company that does span across so many borders in the way that you do now?
Vincent Roche, Analog Devices CEO:
No, I think one of the one of the great facets or characteristics of our business is diversity across products, applications, geographies, customers. And while it’s always hard to divine precisely what’s going to happen on the political side of things, we don’t view that as a significant risk in the regulatory process.
Taylor Riggs:
So, Vince, are you not concerned then, given the politics, given the rising trade tensions, about some of your supply chain risk and moving some of the supply chains that you have out of China, for example?
Vincent Roche, Analog Devices CEO:
Well, we actually - both companies, both ADI and Maxim, actually have very, very, very little manufacturing at all in China. So, you know, I think we have a good spread of manufacturing capabilities in terms of making the silicon itself doing the packaging technologies as well as the testing of our products. It’s very globally distributed across Asia as well as America and Europe. So specific to manufacturing in China, we actually have almost no concern about that, just given the lack of activity.
Caroline Hyde:
Vince, why did you go for an all stock deal?
Vincent Roche, Analog Devices CEO:
Good question. So, at this point in time, we were looking at two things. Number one would be, you know, the combination of the company and the value that we can generate over the long-term and what that would mean to the shareholders of the stock. So we are very confident, given our track record of acquisitions and what has actually happened with the stock of our company post acquisition. Once we begin to realize synergies both on the top line as well as the cost synergies. Also, I mean, just managing in this environment, being able to manage the downside - the downside risk of a very, very uncertain macro environment and very volatile stock market. So, I think being able to do an all stock deal gives us tremendous cushion on the downside. And also, given that our stocks have traded in sync for so many years at a kind of a par value level - an exchange rate level - it makes a lot of sense to do stock.
Romaine Bostick:
So, Vince, I can understand the scaling up aspect of this. And one of the main criticisms for not only for your company, but really of a lot of the analog chip makers is this idea of cyclicality and the idea that as you sort of move into these businesses or scale up or even expand and broaden out, you essentially make yourself even more cyclical than you did before. What is sort of your strategy going forward where you can maybe blunt some of that cyclical impact down the road?
2