I’ve had a small position in this since 2009, when Apple announced it was buying a piece of it. I honestly know nothing about this company, except that Apple felt it was a worthwhile investment. Does anyone else own this? Now that it has appreciated 4x since Apple took its stake, is anyone thinking of selling?

I realize that Apple likely invested simply because IGNMF supplied or designed a component that was important to Apple at the time and not because Apple was looking to make a killer investment. So since this share purchase has presumably worked and propped this company up, would now be a good time to sell…or are its goods/services likely so valuable to Apple that it makes more sense to hold on to it longer? (Especially if Apple might decide to simply plunk down some coin to gobble up the rest of it!... Though that seems unlikely, since at its current $2.6B market cap, IGNMF would stand to be one of Apple’s biggest acquisitions ever, and that doesn’t smell right.)

Any thoughts/info would be much appreciated.

-MacGuffin

MacGuffin - 06 February 2012 07:35 PM

I’ve had a small position in this since 2009, when Apple announced it was buying a piece of it. I honestly know nothing about this company, except that Apple felt it was a worthwhile investment. Does anyone else own this? Now that it has appreciated 4x since Apple took its stake, is anyone thinking of selling?

I realize that Apple likely invested simply because IGNMF supplied or designed a component that was important to Apple at the time and not because Apple was looking to make a killer investment. So since this share purchase has presumably worked and propped this company up, would now be a good time to sell…or are its goods/services likely so valuable to Apple that it makes more sense to hold on to it longer? (Especially if Apple might decide to simply plunk down some coin to gobble up the rest of it!... Though that seems unlikely, since at its current $2.6B market cap, IGNMF would stand to be one of Apple’s biggest acquisitions ever, and that doesn’t smell right.)

Any thoughts/info would be much appreciated.

-MacGuffin

imagination is also owned by Intel.  As far as the future.  They have a very similar business model as ARM, but provide the GPU, Video Encoder, Video Decoder for the A4/A5, they claim thier most recent IP architecture called Rogue has the best performance per watt and performance per mm.  Intel is using Imagination IP in the Atom GPU.  Apple could switch to an ARM GPU called Mali, but IMO Imagination is better.  As for acquisitions, it has critical IP, but it depends .  the recent purchase of Anobit, was for key IP and personnel so it’s a real possibility, but Intel might step in and make it too expensive.  I currently don’t own the stock but have been thinking about adding a position.  I thought it was only available on the London exchange.

Could be like ARM - buying a piece of it or being in a position to prevent a hostile takeover by another company is a fine situation.

It’ll be interesting to see how Apple secures its graphics processing future.  With HiDPI and iOS, having powerful graphics is an obvious necessity (something I’ve long wanted Apple to do, and now something it’s starting to do at least on the iOS side).

Ah, well if Intel has a piece too, that makes it even better I suppose… Hmnn, now if only I knew how to start a bidding war between the two of them to take control of it… 

The shares are traded via pink sheets. From what I recall, the trade cost $50 on my platform. (Ameritrade) But from the returns thus far, it was well worth it! 

Thanks for the info,
MacGuffin

Nice article on IMG

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4236158/Imagination-technologies-to-see-big-royalty-uptick-

Apple could switch to an ARM GPU called Mali, but IMO Imagination is better.

Apple would not switch to Mali.  It would be too much of a SW headache.  You can tell by how smooth an iOS device works.  Apple has taken care to really optimize their graphics and video HW and SW.

As long as Apple grows, so will IMG.

Other companies are adopting IMG because of Apple.  i.e. If it is good enough for Apple, it is good enough for us.

<edit>
One caveat, if Apple is savvy in negotiations as they are made out to be, then I would imagine that they have caps on royalty payments.