Chip firm Socionext to debut in Tokyo after Japan’s biggest 2022 IPO
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CHIP design firm Socionext jumped 15 per cent in its Tokyo debut after completing Japan’s largest initial public offering (IPO) this year, defying recent investor pessimism about global semiconductor shares.
Shares of the Yokohama-based company, which had Panasonic, Fujitsu and the Development Bank of Japan as holders prior to the listing, ended the first session at 4,200 yen. They were sold at 3,650 yen each, the top of the marketed range in an IPO that was upsized to 66.8 billion yen (S$657.3 million) due to high investor interest.
Semiconductor listings in Tokyo tend to perform well in their first session, Bloomberg data shows. Socionext managed to attract buyers even in a weak market for IPOs in Japan, where proceeds slumped 80 per cent this year on an annual comparison. The jump contrasts to a chip-related stocks rout that’s wiped out more than US$240 billion from the sector’s global market value this week after the US imposed curbs on China’s access to technology.
Socionext develops customised systems-on-chips for clients across the consumer, automotive and industrial fields. Apple’s Silicon processors and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon line are mass-market examples of such logic processors, often referred to as the brains of electronic devices. Enterprise customers increasingly seek bespoke, application-specific chips and Socionext competes with Taiwan’s Faraday Technology, Alchip Technologies and Global Unichip to fill that demand.
The company was founded in 2015 from the combination of the SoC divisions of Fujitsu Semiconductor and Panasonic.
It’s the fourth semiconductor company to go public in Japan during the past two years, and the biggest among the country’s nine semiconductor listings in the past decade, the data shows. Just one of them, RS Technologies, didn’t end the first session above the IPO price.
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Looking at the broader market, companies that debuted in Tokyo over the past two years after raising more than US$100 million rose by a 28 per cent average on the first day, Bloomberg data shows.
Demand for Socionext’s IPO “seems to have been strong with long-only funds taking up the deal”, said Clarence Chu, an analyst at Aequitas Research who publishes on Smartkarma. The company is among global chip players attempting to expand in the fast-growing automotive tech industry, with sales to the segment “continually” rising, and had its shares priced “at a more attractive valuation” than peers listed in Japan, the US and Taiwan, he said.
SMBC Nikko Securities, Nomura Securities, Daiwa Securities, Mizuho Securities, Rakuten Securities and Monex were principal underwriting participants in the offering. BLOOMBERG
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