Kioxia Shares Fetch Debut Price of 1,440 Yen

Tokyo, Dec. 18 (Jiji Press)--Shares of Japanese chipmaker Kioxia Holdings Corp. fetched an initial price of 1,440 yen at their stock market debut on Wednesday, lower than the initial public offering price of 1,455 yen.

Based on the initial price on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's top-tier Prime section, the chipmaker's market value totaled 776.2 billion yen, marking this year's second-largest IPO in Japan following Tokyo Metro Co. in October, though short of Kioxia's goal of 1.5 trillion yen set in August.

Kioxia plans to use the proceeds to increase production of memory chips for data centers, whose demand is expected to grow in line with the spread of artificial intelligence.

The company is a successor to Toshiba Memory Corp., which Toshiba Corp. spun off in 2017 as part of its turnaround efforts. Toshiba Memory was then sold to a consortium led by U.S. investment fund Bain Capital for around 2 trillion yen, before being renamed Kioxia in 2019.

Kioxia once received the TSE's stock listing approval in 2020. But the listing was put off due to an uncertain outlook amid trade tensions between the United States and China.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]