Western Digital Corp. has acquired rival SanDisk Corp. for a whopping $19 billion.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal values SanDisk at $86.50 a share, a 15% premium over Tuesday’s close; of note SanDisk traded at less than $60 a share earlier this month before rumors of a possible sale started doing the rounds. The deal consists of Western Digital paying $85.10 per share in cash and 0.0176 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock.

The latest report of an acquisition surfaced Tuesday this week where the acquisition price was speculated to be a lower figure of $16 billion.

Western Digital said in a statement that the combination of the two companies  “is the next step in the transformation of Western Digital into a storage solutions company with global scale, extensive product and technology assets, and deep expertise in non-volatile memory (NVM).”

The deal will see Western Digital double its addressable market and expand its participation in higher-growth segment, as well as allowing Western Digital to vertically integrate into NAND, securing long-term access to solid state technology at lower cost.

Change

The deal comes at a time where the flash memory maker is expected to report little in the way of revenue or profit growth due to intensifying competition that has been dragging down its top line for over six quarters, SiliconANGLE’s Maria Deutscher believes.

“It’s the symptom of a broader squeeze that has already made 2015 the biggest year for mergers in the history of the semiconductor industry, a record that SanDisk’s forthcoming acquisition by Western Digital Corp. is set to cement.”

Western Digital Chief Executive Officer Steve Milligan confirmed the hypothesis, noting that ‘this transformational acquisition aligns with our long-term strategy to be an innovative leader in the storage industry by providing compelling, high-quality products with leading technology…the combined company will be ideally positioned to capture the growth opportunities created by the rapidly evolving storage industry.”

The combined company will offer a lineup including hard disk drives, solid-state drives, cloud data center storage solutions and flash storage solutions, as well as strong R&D and engineering capabilities and perhaps an even more important consideration in the age of patent trolls, over 15,000 combined patents issued or pending worldwide.

The deal is subject to the usual conditions along with regulatory approval and is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2016.

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