Kioxia shares climb 10% on debut in Tokyo after $800 million IPO

A man walks out of the building where the headquarters of Kioxia, the world’s third largest manufacturer of NAND flash memory chips, is located in central Tokyo on August 23, 2024.

Richard A. Brooks | Afp | Getty Images

Shares of Japan computer memory manufacturer Kioxia rose about 10% on its debut in Tokyo after the company raised over just over 120 billion yen ($800 million) in its initial public offering.

Shares closed on Wednesday at 1,601 yen, higher than the offer price of 1,455 yen per share, which was the midpoint of its IPO price band ranging from 1,390-1,520 yen.

Kioxia initially offered 71.8 million shares, but later exercised an overallotment option to offer an additional 10.79 million shares, according to a filing in Japanese on Monday.

The IPO consisted of Kioxia issuing new shares, as well as a sale of shares from major shareholders Bain Capital and Toshiba.

Early on Wednesday, Reuters reported that Kioxia had requested its major shareholders to sell more shares so as to meet listing requirements on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime market.

Kioxia revealed that the ratio of shares in the market is only at 28.09%, below the Prime market’s requirements of 35%.

Kioxia, formerly known as Toshiba Memory, was the chip division of Toshiba, and was sold to a Bain-led consortium in 2018 for $18 billion.

This is not Kioxia’s first crack at trying to list on public markets. Back in 2020, Kioxia postponed plans for an IPO on the grounds that “continued market volatility and ongoing concerns about a second wave of the pandemic” meant that it was not in the best interest of shareholders to proceed with a public listing, it said in a statement at the time.

Reuters reported in September that Bain scrapped its plan for an IPO in October. This was due to a sell off in Japanese stocks in August, which made the 1.5-trillion-yen valuation that Bain had been targeting “challenging,” according to the Reuters report.