(Bloomberg) — Kioxia Holdings Corp. plans to debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange between this December and June next year in a bid to narrow the yawning gap with memory leader Samsung Electronics Co.
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The NAND flash memory maker plans to use a new scheme that would fast-track its oft-delayed initial public offering. Both the price and size of the stake to be floated were undecided, according to a filing on Friday.
The stock offering would represent what may be Kioxia’s last chance to remain competitive. A successful debut would give it money to ramp up capacity and help it capitalize on a recovery in chip prices.
But in the four years since first shelving an October 2020 IPO, the Tokyo-based company’s fallen technologically behind Samsung and SK Hynix Inc., making it even more vulnerable in the next downturn. A prolonged slump in the price of NAND, used in smartphones and solid-state drives, hurt Kioxia more than its rivals, which have revenues from other products such as DRAM and high-bandwidth memory.
The company had most recently eyed an IPO in October in what had been expected to be one of Japan’s biggest offerings of 2024, but that had been postponed.
Shareholder Bain Capital holds 56% of the company, while Toshiba Corp. owns 41% and Hoya Corp. has 3%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The debut also would come as Kioxia continues to juggle on-again-off-again merger talks with Western Digital Corp. After posting six straight quarters of operating losses through 2023, Kioxia needs to show it can ride a recovery in memory prices before the next cyclical downturn.
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