Trump Says Broadcom Will Move Headquarters to U.S.

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said semiconductor company Broadcom Ltd. is returning its headquarters to the U.S. from Singapore.

Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan joined Trump Thursday in the Oval Office for the announcement. Tan said the move to domicile the company in the U.S. would bring $20 billion in revenue into the country.

The two men didn’t specify the site of the new main location. Broadcom’s website lists San Jose, California, as an existing corporate co-headquarters and has done so since the present company was created in 2016 in one of the semiconductor industry’s largest acquisitions when Avago Technologies Ltd. acquired then-Broadcom Corp. The company’s shares declined as much as 4 percent to $248.87 after the announcement. The stock had gained 47 percent this year through Wednesday’s close.

Tan’s visit to the White House comes as his company struggles to get regulatory approval for its $5.9 billion purchase of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. That deal, announced last November, has been delayed at least three times by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a panel that reviews the security risks of foreign acquisitions of American companies.

Acquisitions have been key to Tan’s strategy and he’s played a central role in consolidation of the $300 billion semiconductor industry over the last three years. The company, which is a major supplier to Apple Inc., has built itself from a former division of Hewlett-Packard into one of the industry’s largest chipmakers via a string of purchases. Tan has said he intends to seek more deals, a strategy that could be limited by opposition from U.S. regulators.

Broadcom had annual revenue of $14.9 billion in 2016 and that total is forecast to rise to $18 billion in 2017, according to analysts’ estimates. Brocade reported sales of $2.35 billion in 2016. Broadcom had 15,700 employees as of October 2016., according to regulatory filings.

Broadcom gets 54 percent of its sales in China and 8.5 percent from the U.S., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. About 76 percent of its long-term assets are U.S. based.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.net, Shannon Pettypiece in Washington at spettypiece@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack

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