(Bloomberg) -- Chip design firm Socionext Inc. jumped 15% in its Tokyo debut after completing Japan’s largest initial public offering this year, defying recent investor pessimism about global semiconductor shares.
Shares of the Yokohama-based company, which had Panasonic Holdings Corp., Fujitsu Ltd. and the Development Bank of Japan Inc. 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 ($456 million) due to high investor interest.
Semiconductor listings in Tokyo tend to perform well in their first session, Bloomberg data show. Socionext managed to attract buyers even in a weak market for IPOs in Japan, where proceeds slumped 80% this year on an annual comparison. The jump contrasts to a chip-related stocks rout that’s wiped out more than $240 billion from the sector’s global market value this week after the US imposed curbs on China’s access to technology.
Socionext develops customized systems-on-chips for clients across the consumer, automotive and industrial fields. Apple Inc.’s Silicon processors and Qualcomm Inc.’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 Corp., Alchip Technologies Ltd. and Global Unichip Corp. to fill that demand.
The company was founded in 2015 from the combination of the SoC divisions of Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd. 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 show. Just one of them, RS Technologies Co., didn’t end the first session above the IPO price.
Looking at the broader market, companies that debuted in Tokyo over the past two years after raising more than $100 million rose by a 28% average on the first day, Bloomberg data show.
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 Inc., Nomura Securities Co. Ltd., Daiwa Securities Co. Ltd., Mizuho Securities Co. Ltd., Rakuten Securities and Monex were principal underwriting participants in the offering.
(Updates with closing price)
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Author: Filipe Pacheco and Min Jeong Lee