Report: Kioxia plans IPO in October
The NAND flash producer needs money to pay off a loan that is due. Kioxia is reportedly trying to raise 500 million US dollars through the IPO.
Kioxia is one of the few providers to also offer micro SD cards with 2 TByte.
(Image: c't)
- Lutz Labs
According to a report in the Japanese online newspaper Nikkei, NAND flash manufacturer Kioxia is planning an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company has already confirmed this to the newspaper, although Kioxia declined to comment on the date.
Since the spin-off from parent company Toshiba in 2017, Kioxia has been around 56 percent owned by a private equity consortium led by Bain Capital, which paid around 18 billion US dollars for this stake at the time. Toshiba holds just under 41 percent of the shares, with the remainder in free float.
With the expected proceeds of around 500 million US dollars according to the report, the market value of Kioxia would be around 10.3 billion US dollars, far less than in 2020, when Kioxia had already planned an IPO. At that time, however, the trade disputes between the USA and China caused Kioxia to postpone the plan.
Failed merger due to shareholders
Kioxia and development and production partner Western Digital had been planning a merger of the two companies since 2021. Western Digital had initiated the split of the company into a flash and a hard disk part, the latter was not part of the deal. However, this was ultimately thwarted in 2023 by an objection from SK Hynix. The Korean semiconductor manufacturer holds a stake in Kioxia via the Bain-Captial consortium. Nikkei also speculates that SK Hynix could increase its stake in the consortium after the IPO to strengthen its influence on the competitor.
Kioxia was able to achieve a net profit of almost 500 million US dollars in the last quarter, the highest figure ever. The demand for flash memory is currently being driven primarily by the AI hype, which is demanding ever more and ever faster memory.
(ll)
