Broadcom Looks to Buy CA to Become Larger IT Infrastructure Player

Today’s topics include a surprise $19 billion Broadcom bid for CA Technologies, and Apple releasing new MacBook Pro models.

Broadcom, which failed in its bid to buy rival chip maker Qualcomm for $117 billion, is now attempting to buy software maker CA Technologies for $19 billion. The acquisition would move Broadcom’s focus away from data center infrastructure and components to IT software and solutions.

In documents filed with the SEC July 11, a lot of the focus was on CA’s ability to grow Broadcom’s recurring revenues, expand its margins and earnings, and rapidly broaden the size of Broadcom’s addressable market.

Some of the assets CA will bring to Broadcom include $2.2 billion in annual revenue related to mainframe systems that compete with those from IBM, and $1.7 billion from enterprise IT offerings. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

Apple on July 12 launched more powerful MacBook Pro laptop models with 13-inch or 15-inch displays and a number of new features.

The latest MacBook Pros also now feature the Apple T2 chip, first introduced in the iMac Pro lineup, which provides enhanced system security with support for secure boot and on-the-fly encrypted storage.

The new 15-inch MacBook Pro models start at $2,399 and can be configured with six-core Intel Core i7 or Core i9 processors with up to 32GB of memory. The latest 13-inch MacBook Pro models start at $1,799 and can be configured with quad-core Intel Core i5 or i7 processors with up to 16GB of memory.

The machines are available immediately through Apple.com, select Apple retail stores and authorized resellers.