Moving ever closer to liquidation, Ross Technology Inc has sold off its Isreal-based subsidiary and more of its intellectual property back to its majority shareholder Fujitsu Ltd. Ross announced its first quarter results on Friday, showing a loss of $10.43m compared to a loss of $5.16m in the same quarter last year. Sales were down 34% to $7.83m from $11.8m last time. The company, which has seen sales of its 32-bit Sparc processors decline in the absence of a successor, intends to cease all of its operations by the end of calendar 1988. About 70% of the company’s workforce were laid off on July 31, including the development team of Ross’ Viper 64-bit technology, which was once held to be the savior of the company. The BridgePoint sales, and service operation was sold off in July for $5.66m (CI No 3,460). Now Ross Semiconductors (Israel) Ltd will be sold to Fujitsu for $2.5m, with Fujitsu retaining all the employees. And Fujitsu has also agreed to an asset purchase and licensing agreement for Ross’ intellectual property, valued at $7.6m. These include the rights to the DANlite1, 2 and 3 microprocessor cores, Colorado 4 microprocessor, HyperSparc module IP, and certain 64-bit Viper intellectual property. Ross retains parts of the 64-bit Viper project IP rights. The deal relieves Fujitsu of the need to pay future royalties to Ross for the DANlite cores. Ross was delisted from the NASDAQ market on July 31. Ross says it is attempting to pay off its creditors in full through the sale of products and assets, but doesn’t think there will be anything left over afterwards for distribution to preferred or common stockholders.
