United States: Nokia acquires Infinera for $2.3bn

Nokia has entered a definitive agreement to acquire optical networking vendor Infinera for $2.3 billion with an understanding to make at least 70 percent of the payment in cash, and the overall deal including the repurchase of the $760 million in convertible notes owned by Infinera.

“In 2021 we increased our organic investment in Optical Networks with a view to improving our competitiveness,” said Pekka Lundmark, president and CEO of Nokia. “That decision has paid off and has delivered improved customer recognition, strong sales growth, and increased profitability. We believe now is the right time to take a compelling inorganic step to further expand Nokia’s scale in optical networks.”

David Heard, CEO of Infinera added: “We believe Nokia is an excellent partner and together we will have greater scale and deeper resources to set the pace of innovation and address rapidly changing customer needs at a time when optics are more important than ever – across telecom networks, inter-data center applications, and now inside the data center. This combination will further leverage our vertically integrated optical semiconductor technologies.”