Mosaid Tech

MOSAID Technologies declared a divided of $.25 for its shareholders, continuing a series of quarterly dividend declarations that first began in early 2005. The dividend, declared on February 22, remains as the same rate as in the previous declaration in November of 2006. Earlier dividends were lower than the current dividend, with an all time low of $0.125 back in June of 2005. This steady continuation of dividend payments shows a stabilization of MOSAID Incomes, and combined with the third quarter reports suggests a strong, continuing business that is adapting well to their new focus.

MOSAID has also sold off another portion of its manufacturing and product sales component in the form of its automatic test equipment division to Teradyne, Inc. for $20 million in cash. This sale effectively ends one of MOSAID's previously staple business lines as it translates itself into a purely IP based company. However, while MOSAID has sold off the manufacturing side of their testing division, they have maintained control of the patent and IP rights that their technology is based on. This technology has been licensed to Teradyne in a variety of exclusive and non exclusive licenses, which both allows Teradyne to maintain the purchased division and MOSAID to continue to hold the IP that they had previously developed.

This sale is in line with previous sales over the past two years that have steadily disposed of MOSAID's manufacturing and production divisions. MOSAID has also recently won a bid to hold several key patents on wireless computer communication standards (802.11 a, b, g, and e) that are currently on the market or are in the process of being adopted.

What is interesting is that the sale precedes the acquisition of the patents, strongly suggesting that MOSAID liquidated its production assets in order to competitively bid on the wireless patents package. Given MOSAID's goal of becoming an IP-focused company,