Tokyo: Japanese chipmaker kioxia will go public next month in an initial public offering that will value the company at $4.8 billion, its filing with the Tokyo Stock Exchange he said on Friday.
Formerly the semiconductor unit of Japanese engineering giant Toshiba, the company is the world’s third-largest producer of NAND flash memory French fries.
It was acquired by an American investment firm. Bain Capital in 2018.
Kioxia was expected to go public in October, emboldened by growing demand for artificial intelligence technologybut delayed his plan after the drop in technology stocks.
Its initial public offering, priced at 1,390 yen ($9) per share, will now take place on December 18, the filing shows.
The company will issue around 21.5 million new shares, in addition to more than 50 million that existing shareholders will sell at home and abroad.
With the new offering, its market capitalization will be almost 750 billion yen ($4.8 billion), a company spokeswoman told AFP.
Kioxia will raise about 30 billion yen, but excluding transaction fees, its net income will be 27.7 billion yen, spokeswoman Nanami Hamada said.
memory chips They are used in everyday devices such as smartphones and storage drives, as well as industrial and medical equipment, but their prices are notoriously volatile.
Global demand for chips will skyrocket, driven by the recent growth of generative AI technology like ChatGPT.
Kioxia is among several Japanese semiconductor producers that the government is subsidizing as it seeks to triple sales of domestically produced chips to more than 15 trillion yen by 2030.
Companies such as Toshiba and NEC helped Japan dominate the microchip sector in the 1980s, but competition from South Korea and Taiwan caused its global market share to fall from more than 50 percent to around 10 percent. hundred.
But as China’s growing assertiveness toward Taiwan portends volatility in the self-governing island’s ability to produce semiconductors, hopes are high that Japan will emerge as a new country. chip concentrator.
Last year, America’s Western Digital and Kioxia reportedly shelved talks for a merger that would have created one of the world’s largest memory chip makers.
