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Shares of JX Advanced Metals, a Japanese semiconductor materials supplier, including TSMC and Intel, made their debut on Wednesday with a market capitalization of 81.1 billion yen ($5.4 billion).
The stock rose 6.6% on the first day of trading on the main market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The IPO priced at 820 yen ($5.54), at the top of its sales range. JX Advanced Metals took off from Japanese oil giant Eneos Holdings, which raised 438.6 billion yen ($2.96 billion) from its IPO by selling 57.6% of the company; Eneos retained 42.4% of the shares. JX Advanced Metals did not issue new shares.
JX Advanced Metals' IPO is Japan's largest since 2018, when the son of billionaire Masayoshi rode on telecommunications unit Softbank Corp. Public for a $23.5 billion IPO.
Japan's largest refinery, Eneos, said it will use some of the proceeds to expand supply of green energy, including synthetic fuels and hydrogen. Eneos added that the list will enable JX Advanced Metals to increase investment in semiconductor materials and in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry.
JX Advanced Metals' business spans metal smelting to produce materials for semiconductor and ICT equipment. The Tokyo-based company says it has about 60% of global market share in global sputtering targets, and these materials are used to make films on semiconductors for conductivity. It also claims to have about 80% of the global copper foil market market, which is used to make conductive layers of flexible printed circuits, a bendable version of the electronics motherboard.
In the nine months to December, the latest financial data was available, with JX Advanced Metals' revenue down 54% year-on-year to 516.9 billion yen, while its net profit increased 10% to 46 billion yen. JX Advanced Metals attributed the decline in revenue to the divestiture of several copper businesses. During the same period, the company generated 43% of sales from metal smelting, the rest came from ICT equipment materials and the rest came from semiconductor materials.
JX Advanced Metals has been seeking to focus more on advanced materials, sell its interests in several copper mines, and has withdrawn from its copper smelting joint venture with South Korea Energy Group LS Group in the past two years. The company said it plans to expand its semiconductor material products, such as those of lithography, which are key steps in the chip manufacturing process, where light beams are used to create chip circuits.
In the nine months ended December, its ICT equipment materials sales rose 34% year-on-year, while its semiconductor materials business grew 23.5%. JX Advanced Metals attributes growth to growth in smartphone sales and the AI boom, which has exacerbated demand for high-performance chips in data centers.
JX Advanced Metals is one of the Japanese companies in AI Mania's semiconductor supply chain. In October last year, Rigaku, a semiconductor test equipment maker backed by Carlyle, made a $750 million IPO in Tokyo. The second is Kioxia, a memory chip maker backed by Bain Capital, which raised $800 million in its IPO in December.
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