Cirtek Philippines acquires US antenna solutions company

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Local electronics manufacturer Cirtek Holdings Philippines Corp. is buying a Silicon Valley-based antenna solutions company, its president said Monday.

The company is acquiring Quintel, a product design company that produces the "most advanced seller antennas in the world," said Roberto "Jojo" Dispo.

Dispo said this acquisition, priced at $77 million, is the first of its kind, where a local company is buying a US-based tech company.

"This will bring Cirtek to a global market space and we will bring pride to the Philippines, as well as to usher in a new era for companies in the Philippines by breaking into a Silicon Valley business which is dominated by many US companies," Dispo told ANC's Market Edge.

Quintel is being used by major telecommunications companies in the US such as AT&T and Verizon, said Dispo.

Apart from doubling the company's revenue for 2018, Dispo said the acquisition will also generate jobs for Filipinos, locally and in the US and other parts of Asia.

The company, he said, posted an advertisement for hiring 20 fresh- graduate engineers immediately for deployment in the Silicon Valley and in Asia, potentially Singapore, for their manufacturing expansion.

He added, as soon as part of the research and development facility of Quintel is transferred to the Philippines, "we will be recruiting top graduates from engineering universities in the country to be able to populate that R&D lab."

He also revealed that Cirtek is eyeing 2 more acquisitions in the next year and a half in the area of artificial intelligence and data analytics.

Dispo said there are also offers from international foreign investment banks to bring them to a roadshow and introduce them to investors and also "potentially accessing the international capital market, either equity or debt."