OCZ Filing for Bankruptcy, Announces Offer from Toshiba to Purchase Assets

[Cristian_25H]

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that on November 25, 2013, it received notices that Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. ("Hercules") took exclusive control of the Company's depository accounts at Silicon Valley Bank and Wells Fargo Bank, National Association. As set forth in the Company's recent SEC filings, Hercules and the Company are parties to a loan and security agreement. As previously reported, the Company is not in compliance with certain of the operating ratios and covenants in the loan agreement. As a result of such action and pursuant to Hercules' written instruction, the depository institutions disbursed the cash in the Company's respective accounts to accounts under the control of Hercules.

The Company has received an offer from Toshiba Corporation to acquire substantially all of the Company's assets in a bankruptcy proceeding. The parties have substantially completed negotiations on an asset purchase agreement and OCZ believes that all the material terms have been agreed to.



The agreement is subject to various conditions: the preservation of the value of the business, including the retention of employees, the negotiation and execution of definitive documentation, the filing of bankruptcy petitions by the Company and certain of its subsidiaries, Toshiba's offer being accepted by the bankruptcy court as the highest and best offer under the circumstances after an auction process conducted under the relevant provisions of the United States Bankruptcy Code, and other customary closing conditions. The Company expects to file a petition for bankruptcy shortly after completing final documentation with Toshiba and Hercules, and to conduct the court-supervised auction process to attempt to maximize the value of the Company's assets and operations in an orderly process. More details will become available when the Company files its petition for bankruptcy.

If the Company is not able to agree to final documentation with Toshiba, the Company expects to imminently file a petition for bankruptcy and liquidate.

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[newtekie1]

What a shame, I have a couple of their flash drives, and still have some of their DDR2 RAM in one of my rigs. Though once they dropped out of the RAM business they haven't really put out anything that have sparked my interest...

 

[Cristian_25H]

I think my Vertex 4 could use a hug right about now. Too bad it can't be taken out of the PC since it runs stuff .

 

[ssdpro]

Being taken over by Toshiba would probably be a huge positive. That would give them some additional R&D and a solid NAND supply.

 

[the54thvoid]

Wow - i never knew they were in trouble.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

well i cant say im surprised OCZ eventually went bankrupt. Its still sad in a small way as the brand which has been with us since the huge enthusiast boom back in '97/00 will cease to exist. I owned and recommended quite a few of their products and never had any issues with them but I hear their overall quality of their SSDs took a running jump off a cliff like a paranoid schizophrenic moose. so everyone stopped buying or recommending their products.

Im not quite sure what sort of assets OCZ has that Toshiba might want (ssd controllers possibly?) as Toshiba already make their own SSDs.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Wow - i never knew they were in trouble.

theyve been in trouble for quite a while now - They were caught lying about their numbers on their quarterly/yearly reports. I knew they were in the shit but i never thought it would come to them declaring bankruptcy

 

[FR@NK]

Im not quite sure what sort of assets OCZ has that Toshiba might want (ssd controllers possibly?) as Toshiba already make their own SSDs.

Their biggest asset is their brand name and product placement within the market.

 

[newtekie1]

Im not quite sure what sort of assets OCZ has that Toshiba might want (ssd controllers possibly?) as Toshiba already make their own SSDs.

It could be their way of getting into the enthusiast power supply market as well.

 

[freaksavior]

Wow - i never knew they were in trouble.

Same here. I thought they downsized to focus on a single area of production, not because they were in financial trouble.

 

[Jorge]

This is no surprise at all to anyone who has watched the charades at OCZ in recent years. Their rushed-to-market products had countless issues and OCZ's response was hardly what one would expect from a reputable company, IMO. It would appear that they were cooking the books for years . I guess it finally caught up to them. They didn't have any great products so they won't be missed.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Their biggest asset is their brand name and product placement within the market.

Yet to be determined - There are a lot of folks who didnt like OCZ at all. Whether or not Toshiba allows them to continue trading under the OCZ brand name is anyones guess - Toshiba dont do power supplies so who knows if they will keep the name just for that department. Unless they wanted to keep OCZ as the 'enthusiast' division of Toshiba then i dont see how it can work

 

[N3M3515]

Oh god, i just bought an ocz psu

 

[FordGT90Concept]

WTF? How? I thought they were a leader, if not the leader, in SSDs. Are the profit margins so thin they can't stay above water?

It isn't surprising Toshiba would buy them though.

 

[newtekie1]

WTF? How? I thought they were a leader, if not the leader, in SSDs. Are the profit margins so thin they can't stay above water?

It isn't surprising Toshiba would buy them though.

I assume the issue with the SSD market is the same they had with the DDR market, there are too many people in the game driving down profit margins and taking sales.

These days every hardware manufacturer and their mothers want to sell SSDs. If anything, Toshiba is buying OCZ simply to take a competitor out of the market and to keep someone else from buying them and selling their SSDs.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

WTF? How? I thought they were a leader, if not the leader, in SSDs. Are the profit margins so thin they can't stay above water?

It isn't surprising Toshiba would buy them though.

have a look at all the other SSD manufacturers - almost all of them do other stuff apart from just SSDs. what do OCZ do? SSDs+PSUs. They did do gaming peripherals, RAM & CPU coolers a few years back but discontinued those product lines completely.

When you only sell 2 product lines compared to competitors who do cases, peripherals, ram, fans & other products. The stuff you make has to be better than the competitions while remaining very competitively priced to make sure you hold onto that top spot and give people a reason to buy your products.

OCZ PSUs were pretty good from what i hear but they werent amazing or outstanding and their performance sure as hell didnt put them above the crowd. Throw in all the customers who OCZ let down in the SSD department and its a recipe for disaster because the customers are going to go out there and tell everyone else about how unreliable your products are and people will stay away from you.

OCZ simply didnt have any profitable product lines to fall back on - the PSU market is already swamped with other big names, Corsair, Enermax, Antec Thermaltake - etc etc etc. OCZ just didnt stand a chance.

Its like opening up a chinese take away and only selling pot noodle. youre never gonna turn a profit unless you expand - add more dishes to your repertoire, hire the right chefs who can cook more dishes etc etc.

 

[natr0n]

OCZ always seemed like a shady company to me.

 

[Prima.Vera]

... their overall quality of their SSDs took a running jump off a cliff like a paranoid schizophrenic moose. so everyone stopped buying or recommending their products.

This. Vertex 2 and 3 were a disaster. They had the highest failure rate on the market by far. And to be honest everybody I know is telling me the same things, stay away from Vertexes...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

This. Vertex 2 and 3 were a disaster. They had the highest failure rate on the market by far. And to be honest everybody I know is telling me the same things, stay away from Vertexes...

I had an 80GB Vertex 2E and I never had an problems with it - used it for just over a year and sold it to Bo$$ who is still using it afaik. but i did heard a lot of bad talk about the vertex series. but I think it was more to do with the lower range of vertex SSDs like the Agility series - those were just bad,

 

[alwayssts]

It was all over when Ryan Petersen up and ran away to a non-extradition country (or so the rumor goes).

He was not just the soul of that company, he was that company.

Yes, he allegedly did some shady shit...all the way from the beginnings in his garage up to when he fled. I remember one individual I used to speak with back in the early days that knew him personally and held a grudge against him since the very beginning because of his 'unique attitude' and way of doing things...turns out he was probably right.

That said, he pushed the envelope on both emerging tech and binning of existing tech. Everything from the first overclocked ram (and seizing on new/certain types unique properties including the repurposing of Winbond bh-5), some of the first good air coolers, the failed 'simple' phase-change cooler, acquiring PCP&C, up to realizing sandforce for what it was before anyone else as well as trying to add their mindset to indilinx controllers.

That was the whole appeal of OCZ: a 'big-enough' company that they could round up and seperate elite tech and push it forward first to enthusiasts. When they lost that, and with it the (overwhelming support of the) enthusiast community (that swelled with their upcoming and shrank when started concentrating on ssds) even with slashing prices and trying to work on volume...they were done.

 

[natr0n]

I remember the utt ram and the ram overvolter module/dimm thing good ole days those were.

 

[Mathragh]

Wow, its a good thing I sent back my broken 60GB vertex when I did, even got a 2nd gen in return.

Too bad for them, although as others also have said, they never really gave me a strong sense of quality or reliability.

 

[Jeffredo]

Shame. I still have some of their RAM in one of my PCs, a power supply unit from PC Power and Cooling (which they bought a while back), plus two SSDs both still under warranty. Guess I'm on my own with those two.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Shame. I still have some of their RAM in one of my PCs, a power supply unit from PC Power and Cooling (which they bought a while back), plus two SSDs both still under warranty. Guess I'm on my own with those two.

Toshiba will still honor warranty. Its what most manufacturers do when they merge with each other. Im sure there are still loads of people out there who are running OCZ SSDs that are still under warranty, Toshiba arent going to ignore them

 

[Steevo]

My Agility drives were and still are great, sandforce was the cause of the issues. my only feel bad is the loss of the PC Power and Cooling PSU's as they were amazing and have had the name whored out too much.