Kioxia to Go Public on Dec. 18

Tokyo, Nov. 22 (Jiji Press)--Japanese chipmaker Kioxia Holdings Corp. said Friday that it has received approval from the Tokyo Stock Exchange to list its shares on the exchange's top-tier Prime section on Dec. 18.
 

The company's market capitalization is estimated at some 750 billion yen with a projected initial public offering price of 1,390 yen.
 

Kioxia, previously called Toshiba Memory Corp., will raise 27.7 billion yen in the IPO, aiming to utilize the proceeds to increase production of cutting-edge memory chips for data centers, to meet growing demand due to the spread of artificial intelligence.
 

U.S. investment fund Bain Capital LP and Toshiba Corp. will sell part of their Kioxia shares. As a result, Bain Capital's stake in Kioxia will fall from 56 pct to 51 pct, while Toshiba's will decline from 41 pct to 32 pct. Optical equipment company Hoya Corp., which owns 3 pct of Kioxia, will not sell any of its holding.
 

Kioxia previously planned to go public last month with a market capitalization of 1.5 trillion yen, but the move was postponed due to lower stock prices.
 

Toshiba, which was in a financial crisis, spun off its memory business in 2017 as Toshiba Memory, which was sold to an international consortium including Bain Capital in 2018.
 

Kioxia once received the TSE's stock listing approval in 2020, but it had put off the IPO due to the impact of tensions between the United States and China.
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