SHANGHAI/BEIJING, July 19 (Reuters) – Chinese chipmaker CXMT Corp’s $8.6 billion initial public offering was more than 500 times oversubscribed by institutional investors, according to a filing on Sunday, but the demand was less feverish than in recent Chinese tech IPOs, reflecting caution amid a global selloff in chip stocks.
Attention will now shift to CXMT’s listing expected later this month on Shanghai’s STAR Market, which will test the market ahead of a slew of other high-profile IPOs as Beijing pushes for self-sufficiency in its tech rivalry with Washington.
In a statement on Sunday, CXMT, China’s top memory chipmaker, said institutional investors including mutual funds, pension funds and insurers subscribed for a total of 1.24 trillion shares, compared with 2.17 billion IPO shares on offer to them.
That translates into an oversubscription ratio of roughly 570 times. The multiple points to solid demand, but is much smaller than in recent STAR Market IPOs.
For example, public sale shares by Zhuhai Trinomab Pharmaceutical Co, Chongqing Genori Technology Co, and Wuhan Changjin Photonics were all over 5,000 times oversubscribed by institutional investors.
CXMT’s IPO, Asia’s biggest so far this year, comes amid a brutal sell-off in once high-flying chip stocks as investors from Seoul to Silicon Valley start asking whether the AI boom became over-leveraged and got ahead of itself.
In China, the STAR Market, home to many leading chip stocks, has plunged roughly 25% from its July 1 peak, wiping out over 4 trillion yuan ($590.32 billion) of market value.
Sunday’s announcement came days after CXMT said the retail portion of its IPO was 243.93 times oversubscribed, also pointing to less investor fervour.
CXMT, the world’s fourth-biggest DRAM chipmaker after Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Technology, has not disclosed when it will list on the STAR Market. Sources told Reuters the stock will debut on July 27.
The AI boom has boosted demand for DRAM, or dynamic random-access memory chips, which are used in smartphones, computers, servers and other electronics.
($1 = 6.7760 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Shanghai and Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
