The Wall Street Journal: Japanese chip maker Kioxia calls off massive IPO

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A Japanese semiconductor maker called off what was to have been one of this year’s biggest stock offerings, after earlier saying that U.S. export restrictions on China’s Huawei Technologies Co. were hurting its business.

Kioxia Holdings Corp., owned by a Bain Capital-led consortium, had planned to list its shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Oct. 6 at a price that would give the company a valuation of around $16 billion. It already had reduced the planned listing price and warned about the Huawei problem.

Kioxia said Monday it was postponing the initial public offering indefinitely, providing one of the biggest concrete examples of how the recent U.S.-China battle over technology is affecting companies world-wide.

The company didn’t mention Huawei in its news release. It offered the coronavirus pandemic and stock-market volatility as reasons for the decision without giving details. The Japanese maker of flash-memory chips has said its sales to Huawei make up a considerable part of overall revenue and will likely be subject to U.S. export restrictions.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

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