Japan chipmaker Kioxia to delay $10 bln IPO plan: reports
TOKYO — Japanese chipmaker Kioxia has decided to delay a potential $10 billion public offering as the value of global semiconductor stocks trends weaker, Japanese media said.
Formerly the semiconductor unit of Japanese engineering giant Toshiba, the company is the world’s third-largest producer of NAND flash memory chips.
Kioxia, acquired by US investment firm Bain Capital in 2018, had been expected to go public in October, emboldened by soaring demand for AI technology.
But following tech share routs, it has judged the timing not quite right, according to Kyodo News, the Nikkei business daily and other outlets, citing unnamed sources.
In a statement to AFP, Kioxia said on Wednesday it had nothing new to discuss about its IPO plan.
“We are continuing our preparations to list our shares at an appropriate time. We will refrain from discussing the timing of our listing,” it said.
Kyodo said late Tuesday that the chipmaker “expects demand for its shares not to be strong enough to achieve its market capitalization goal of 1.5 trillion yen ($10.4 billion), given uncertainty over the outlook for the memory chip market”.
Memory chips are used in everyday devices such as smartphones and storage drives, as well as in industrial and medical equipment, but their prices are notoriously volatile.
Global demand for the chips is set to rocket, driven by the recent growth of generative AI tech such as ChatGPT.
If realized, Kioxia’s listing would outshine last year’s most valuable IPO deal — 420 billion yen for chip manufacturing firm Kokusai Electric.
It would also surpass subway goliath Tokyo Metro’s anticipated 700-billion-yen move to go public this year.
Kioxia is among several Japanese semiconductor producers that the government is subsidizing as it seeks to triple the sales of domestically produced chips to more than 15 trillion yen by 2030.
Firms like Toshiba and NEC helped Japan dominate in microchips in the 1980s, but competition from South Korea and Taiwan saw its global market share slump from more than 50 percent to around 10 percent.
But with China’s growing assertiveness toward Taiwan heralding volatility in the self-ruled island’s ability to produce semiconductors, hopes are running high that Japan will re-emerge as a new chip hub.
Last year, Western Digital of the United States and Kioxia reportedly shelved talks for a merger that would have created one of the world’s largest memory chip makers.
