Chipmaker CXMT surges 400% in its stock market debut
The shares of the Chinese company multiply their initial quotation by six and the company surpasses the value of the American Intel
BarcelonaThe largest Chinese chip manufacturer, Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), debuted this Monday on the Shanghai stock exchange, marking the second-largest IPO in the Asian giant's history. At the close of the session, the company's shares had appreciated by 466%, almost multiplying their initial quotation by six. Early on Monday, the technology company's shares had a unit price of 8.66 yuan (1.12 euros), while at the end of the day their value had risen to 49.5 yuan (6.41 euros).
With these figures, the company, headquartered in the city of Hefei, in the east of the country, reaches a market capitalization of 3.28 trillion yuan (424,142 million euros). This positions it as the largest company in China, displacing the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and at the same time surpassing technology giants like the American Intel. The proceeds from this operation far exceed CXMT's initial forecasts, which had estimated its investment projects at 29,500 million yuan (3,819 million euros).
The company's stock market debut comes at a key time for the semiconductor industry, used in various devices, such as smartphones or artificial intelligence (AI) servers.
Beijing's bid to compete globally
Founded in 2016, CXMT has precisely been one of the Chinese government's bets to reduce dependencies in the sector, dominated by Korean multinationals, such as SK Hynix and Samsung, or American giants like Micron. The company, specializing in the production of dynamic random-access memory chips (DRAM), has already become the fourth largest manufacturer in the world with a market share of 7.7%, as detailed by the company itself in the documents presented before its stock market debut.
According to various analysts, the success of the operation could encourage Chinese rivals in the same sector to undertake stock market exits, following in the footsteps of the major American tech companies that recently landed on the selective indexes to attract new funding for their macro-projects in artificial intelligence. The AI sector is one of those that generates the most reluctance at a geopolitical level, especially due to the competition between China and the United States, as well as with other Asian countries.