Toshiba to divest nand production to separate company

Toshiba has decided to split its memory business into a separate company. By finding an investor, the manufacturer wants to compensate for a financial setback that occurred after the acquisition of a company that builds nuclear power plants. The company will remain in the hands of Toshiba.

Toshiba wants to split off the memory branch and sell a twenty percent share to investors for about 1.6 billion euros, Reuters writes. The sale must be completed before the end of the financial year, which ends in March.

Toshiba previously indicated that it was considering separating the nand production division, but now the board of directors has actually made that decision. It is not yet known whether there is already an investor, according to rumors, HDD manufacturer Western Digital is interested.

Toshiba wants to use the income from the spin-off to absorb a financial blow that occurred after the acquisition of an American company that builds nuclear power plants. Losses would have amounted to $6 billion. Splitting off the memory branch is one of the measures Toshiba is taking to absorb this setback.

Toshiba and Western Digital already have ties that started after WD acquired SanDisk last year. SanDisk and Toshiba have worked together for many years in the production of flash memory. After Samsung, Toshiba is the world’s largest producer of nand memory, which is used in SSDs and smartphones, for example.