Kioxia shares rise slightly in Tokyo debut following an $800 million initial public offering
A man leaves the building that houses the headquarters of Kioxia, the world’s third-largest maker of NAND flash memory chips, in central Tokyo on August 23, 2024.
Richard A. Brooks | Afp | Getty Images
Shares of Japanese computer memory maker Kioxia rose 2.69% in their Tokyo debut after the company raised just over 120 billion yen ($800 million) in its initial public offering.
The shares were trading at 1,484 yen at 9:14 a.m. Tokyo time, slightly higher than the offering price of 1,455 yen per share, with the midpoint of the IPO price range between 1,390 and 1,520 yen.
Kioxia initially offered 71.8 million shares, but later exercised an over-allotment option to offer an additional 10.79 million shares a submission in Japanese on Monday.
The IPO consisted of the issuance of new shares by Kioxia and a sale of shares from major shareholders Bain Capital and Toshiba.
Reuters reported early Wednesday that Kioxia had asked its major shareholders to sell more shares to meet listing requirements on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime Market.
Kioxia announced that the market share ratio is only 28.09% Prime Market requirements of 35%.
Kioxia, formerly known as Toshiba Memory, was Toshiba’s chip division and was sold to a consortium led by Bain in 2018 for $18 billion.
The third time is the charm
This is not Kioxia’s first attempt to list on public markets. In 2020, Kioxia Plans for an IPO postponed arguing that “ongoing market volatility and ongoing concerns about a second wave of the pandemic” meant it was not in the best interests of shareholders to proceed with a listing, it said in a statement at the time.
Reuters reported in September that Bain scrapped its plan to go public in October. This was due to a sell-off in Japanese stocks in August that made Bain’s targeted valuation of 1.5 trillion yen “challenging,” the Reuters report said.
