Japanese tech giant Kioxia has filed for an IPO in Tokyo with shares expected to hit the market at some time in October. The valuation looks impressive, at USD 10.3bn. Kioxia is ranked number five in the world in terms of the export of solid state drives.
The company originally hinted back in April that it would be going to the market as part of a recapitalisation process, as it needed to pay off a USD 900mn loan that was due in June. Kioxia expects to return to profitability in the next financial year, ending March 2025. Analysts expect the company will be a beneficiary of the increased demand for NAND (non-volatile flash memory) due to the need for fast AI data storage.
Kioxia has been talking about an IPO for some time now: original plans to come onto the Tokyo stock market were shelved due to the Covid pandemic. The company is currently majority owned by a private equity consortium led by Bain Capital following an USD18mn deal with Toshiba in 2018.
The current valuation Kioxia is seeking from the market would give it a 5 to 1 PE ratio based on its annual net income of JPY 300bn. This is roughly half the valuation the company was originally seeking when it last tried to list in 2020.
MBX Biosciences IPO to fund phase 3 endocrine drug development
We are seeing a burst of activity in the US biosciences IPO field, with MBX Biosciences just the latest to file. MBX has raised over USD 63.5mn privately and is coming to the market as it seeks funding for an endocrine disease drug which could challenge market leader Yorvipath. MBX wants to take the new drug into phase three development.
MBX uses technology that is tackling the limitations of unmodified and modified peptide therapies by engineering peptides to improve their druglike properties. The company is trying to develop much more efficient treatments for patients than those currently on the market.
Management at the biotech firm said they would report their top line data in Q3 2025. MBX is effectively going head to head with market leader Ascendis, which owns Yoripath. MBX is also working on an obesity drug which is in phase one testing and hopes to take this onto phase two later this year. Some of the IPO money will be used to take the obesity candidate to clinical testing.
Siguiri Gold sees imminent listing on ASX
Australian miner Siguiri Gold is preparing for an IPO on the ASX. The company has been described by its CEO Michael Minsora as “a special opportunity” – a gold-focused miner with a strategic asset in Guinea close to the active AngloGold SAG project. Management says it is waiting from approval from the ASX, expected in the next week or so.
Minsora said Siguiri is “a very simple operation”, with over 30,000 metres drilled to date, and is very confident in the geology uncovered. The proposed mine is located in the Siguiri Basin within the Birimian Greenstone Belt. Minsora is targeting a maiden mineral resource in Q1 2025, with a further 30,000+ metres still to drill.
Guinea continues to progress its attractiveness as a metals and mining destination, including for gold and iron ore.