In some ways the disappearance of Imagination Technologies from the stock market, if it attracts a takeover offer, might be no bad thing. Investors will be well aware that this has been a horribly volatile stock. With more than half the chip designer’s revenues coming from Apple, it was also vulnerable to the periodic slowdowns in the mobile phone market, in the run-up to the launch of new models, for example. It also has never paid a dividend.
The shares were above £6 in 2012. They rose 13½p to 157p after some better-than-expected results yesterday. When, at the end of March, Apple indicated that it would no longer use Imagination’s processing technology, they were trading at almost £3. It was an especially harsh blow coming