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How it started
Divestiture from Motorola and first IPO
As of 2003, Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector earned US$5.0 billion in semiconductor sales in 2002 (out of US$27 billion sales for all of Motorola).
Motorola announced that their semiconductor division would be divested on October 6, 2003 and would have a temporary name SPS Spinco.
Freescale completed its Initial public offering (IPO) on July 16, 2004, at a price of US$13. In its announcement, it estimated the stock price to be US$17.50- 19.50 but following a cooling of the market towards tech stocks, it lowered its price to US$13. Existing shareholders of Motorola stock received 0.110415 shares of Freescale stock for every share of Motorola stock as a dividend which was distributed on December 2, 2004.
Buyout
On September 15, 2006, Freescale agreed to accept a buyout for the sum of $17.6 billion ($40 per share) by a consortium led by the Blackstone Group. Share prices of $13 at the July 2004 IPO had risen to $39.35 in afterhours trading that Friday when the news, rumored that week, broke. A special shareholders meeting on November 13, 2006, voted to accept the buyout offer. The purchase, which closed on December 1, 2006, is reportedly the largest private buyout of a technology company and one of the ten largest buyouts of all time.
From Wikipedia’s article on Freescale Semiconductor, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3