Western Digital agrees to buy SanDisk for $19B

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) agreed to buy SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) on Wednesday in a roughly $19 billion dollar deal.

The acquisition would supply the Irvine, Calif.-based drive maker with semiconductors and flash memory chips used in computer and mobile device data storage. Western Digital held 44 percent of the hard-disk drive market share in 2014, but suffered a 4 percent decline in sales during the company’s last fiscal year.

Western Digital announced it would pay $86.50 a share for Milpitas, Calif.-based SanDisk, including $85.10 a share in cash and 0.0176 of a Western Digital common share.

As of the market’s close Tuesday, SanDisk was valued at roughly $15.4 billion based on shares trading at $75.19, according to Bloomberg Business.

Read more from Bloomberg Business.