Kioxia to file for IPO in coming days, with shares scheduled for late October

Formally, the Japanese company Kioxia traces its history back to December 2017, but it received its current name in October 2019, and the flash memory business was separated from the Toshiba corporation structure in April 2017. It has been reported more than once that Kioxia intends to enter the stock market this year, and now sources note that an IPO application will be filed in the coming days.

Image source: Kioxia

At least, this is the information shared by Reuters. Kioxia will file a full application for a public offering of shares by August of this year, and by the end of October it expects to enter the stock exchange with its securities. In the event of temporary obstacles on this path, the placement dates may be postponed to December of this year. We remind you that the shares of the former parent corporation of Kioxia, Toshiba, left the Tokyo Stock Exchange at the end of December last year, but the company expects to return to the quotation list of this platform in a few years.

The Bain-led consortium of investors, which spent money on buying back shares in 2018, intends to recoup part of the investment by listing Kioxia shares on the stock exchange, and the Japanese company itself hopes to raise funds by issuing additional shares during these events. Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities (MUMSS) and Nomura Securities have been selected as advisers in preparing for the IPO, according to sources. Official representatives of all of the companies declined to comment, and Kioxia made it clear that it has nothing new to report regarding preparations for the IPO. The timing of the entry into the stock market is being chosen in such a way as to avoid a period characterized by a decline in demand for solid-state memory such as NAND, which Kioxia produces.

In 2020, the company already had to refrain from plans to go public due to unfavorable market conditions. At that time, Kioxia was based on IPO conditions corresponding to a capitalization level of more than $12.6 billion. Kioxia ended the last quarter with an operating loss, although it received a net profit for the first time in six previous quarters. In the first three months of this year, prices for NAND memory increased by an average of 20%.

Kioxia’s IPO preparations allowed it to refinance some of its old loans last week, as lenders were encouraged by the company’s plans to go public before the end of the year. Kioxia’s merger talks with longtime manufacturing partner Western Digital fell apart last year under pressure from SK hynix, a nominal investor in Kioxia that has no interest in bringing a new major competitor to the market. The Japanese memory maker then decided to go public to raise capital.