Kioxia IPO price values firm at US$5 billion

The on-off-on IPO of Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia Corp. has been priced at between 1,390 and 1,520 yen (between about US$9.25 and US$10.12). This values the company at between 749 billion yen to 819 billion yen (between about US$5.0 billion and US$5.45 billion).

Kioxia is backed by a consortium led by Bain Capital, which acquired the chipmaker from conglomerate Toshiba for 2 trillion yen (about US$13.3 billion) in 2018.

Bain is now trying to offload its holdings but cancelled planned IPO in October when potential investors indicated a market value of 800 billion yen rather than the 1.5 trillion yen valuation Bain was seeking.

However, it seems that Bain is now reconciled to taking a loss on the disposal as this would provide public fund-raising options for Kioxia to develop its business. Kioxia is now expected to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on December 18