CXMT's $9.8bn Shanghai debut soars almost 500%

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ChangXin Memory Technologies has completed the step that had been pending all weekend: the Chinese DRAM manufacturer began trading on Shanghai's STAR Market on Monday and closed its first session up 466%, having risen roughly 470% during the day, according to the South China Morning Post. The listing raised 66.5 billion yuan, reported as roughly $9.8bn and, by Le Monde, as €9.8bn — the largest fundraising in Asia this year, and one that Le Monde had described only as imminent the day before. At the close the company was valued at 3.28 trillion yuan, about $484.6bn, and Nikkei Asia reports that the debut briefly lifted CXMT's market capitalisation above that of Intel. The figures that had circulated as projections are now realised outcomes: the first-day move, the closing valuation, the record turnover and the comparison with Intel all rest on Monday's trading rather than on expectations. What remains open is the wider effect. Chinese regulators held consultations on 21 July ahead of the debut, and how the rest of the country's technology market absorbs the capital drawn in by an offering of this size is not yet settled in the available reporting.

ChangXin Memory Technologies, known as CXMT, is a Chinese manufacturer of DRAM, the memory chips used in computers, phones and servers, and is one of the country's most prominent attempts to build a domestic alternative to established foreign suppliers. Its share sale on the STAR Market, Shanghai's board for technology companies, raised 66.5 billion yuan, reported as approximately $9.8bn and as €9.8bn by Le Monde, making it the biggest fundraising in Asia so far this year. Listings of this scale draw scrutiny both for what they signal about investor appetite for Chinese semiconductor firms and for the volume of capital they pull out of the wider market. Chinese regulators held consultations shortly before the debut, according to the reporting. The size of the first-day gain, and the valuation it produced relative to established chipmakers, is the central point of contention in coverage of the listing.