Keysight Outbids VIAVI with $1.5B Late-Stage Offer for Spirent

Keysight Technologies has made an offer to acquire Spirent Communications in a deal worth £1.16 billion ($1.46 billion). The offer represents an increase over VIAVI Solutions’ $1.3 billion offer earlier this month. Keysight said that Spirent’s board of directors has unanimously withdrawn its recommendation to accept VIAVI’s offer and intends to accept the proposal from Keysight.

With Spirent’s offerings, Keysight added that it expects to address new serviceable available market opportunities of up to $1.5 billion. Keysight anticipates greater efficiency post-integration by leveraging its existing administrative and sales infrastructure and through consolidation of office space, equipment, and other optimization measures.

According to Keysight CEO Satish Dhanasekaran, Spirent's differentiated portfolio makes it a strong fit for Keysight. The proposed acquisition, he said, would provide Spirent with the capital and resources to accelerate growth and drive product development.

Commenting on the offer from Keysight, VIAVI said in a statement, “VIAVI believes that the proposed combination of Keysight and Spirent would further entrench Keysight’s leading position in many product segments, which would limit customer choice.”

Keysight is a developer and manufacturer of test and measurement equipment and software launched in 2014 as a spinoff of Agilent Technologies. The company provides oscilloscopes, optical inspection equipment, lasers, and other equipment and software for the telecom, aerospace and defense, industrial, computer, and semiconductor industries.

Spirent is a provider of products, services, and managed solutions for test assurance and automation of technologies including 5G, software-defined wide area networks, cloud, and autonomous vehicles. The company’s international positioning, navigation, and timing business serves customers in research and development, verification, and integration testing, including the testing of hybrid positioning and sensor fusion under real-world conditions. The company previously acquired wireless testing company octoScope in 2021.