China’s biggest memory chipmaker is about to test the public markets. ChangXin Memory Technologies, known as CXMT, has priced its Shanghai IPO at 8.66 yuan ($1.28) a share, the South China Morning Post reported. The sale will raise about 57.9 billion yuan, or $8.5bn.
That would make it the largest listing by a Chinese semiconductor company on a mainland exchange. It beats the record set by SMIC, which raised 53.23 billion yuan in Shanghai in 2020.
CXMT is selling nearly 6.7 billion shares, about 10% of the company. At that price the Hefei-based firm would be worth 579 billion yuan, or roughly $85bn, when it debuts on Shanghai’s Star Market. A 15% overallotment could push the raise to 66.6 billion yuan ($9.8bn). Subscriptions open on Thursday, and CXMT has not set a trading date.
A memory champion built by the state
Founded in 2016 with government backing, CXMT is China’s answer to Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. It makes DRAM, the working memory inside phones, PCs, and servers. It now holds an estimated 7.7% of the global DRAM market.
Its customers read like a roll-call of Chinese tech. Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance all buy its chips. The firm has ridden the AI-driven memory shortage that has pushed DRAM prices sharply higher.
The growth has been steep. In the first quarter, CXMT’s revenue jumped more than 700% year on year to 50.8 billion yuan ($7.4bn). It also swung to a large profit, according to reports on its filings.
Washington is watching
The timing matters. Last month the Pentagon added CXMT to its list of “Chinese military companies”. Reuters has reported that a US interagency committee cleared the chipmaker for the Commerce Department’s Entity List, a trade blacklist. That step has not yet taken effect.
A listing raises the stakes. CXMT still leans on foreign tools to make its chips, and US export controls limit its access to advanced machines from suppliers such as ASML. Going public now lets it raise money at home while it still can.
The raise dwarfs its stated needs. CXMT earmarked 29.5 billion yuan for investment projects in its prospectus. The offering will bring in nearly double that. The extra cash buys room to keep adding capacity, and a cushion if Washington tightens the screws.
For Beijing, the deal is a milestone in its push for chip self-reliance. For CXMT, it is a war chest raised at the top of a memory boom, and just ahead of a blacklist that could make the next raise far harder.
