The original Toshiba Storage announced its listing after losing four consecutive fiscal quarters last year, but the listing process was twists and turns. Kioxia, which was originally scheduled to go public on October 6, suddenly suspended its IPO a week ago. At this time, it was rumored to go public at the end of the year.

According to the Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, the world’s second-largest flash memory chip manufacturer, KIOXIA of Japan, will soon reapply for listing, seeking an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as early as December.

In response, a Kioxia spokesperson stated that the company hopes to “consider the best time to go public.”

Once successfully listed, Kioxia will create the largest IPO case in Japan this year.

The company announced its listing plan in March as early as March, and will raise 347 billion yen (about 3.3 billion US dollars at the time) through an IPO. At the end of August, Kioxia further stated that it had obtained a listing permission and planned to go public on October 6, when the Japanese stock market was in a surge phase.

However, on the eve of the upcoming listing, that is, on September 28, Kioxia announced that it would temporarily shelve its IPO plan. The reason was simply explained as “market fluctuations and the second wave of suspicions about the epidemic.” President Nobuo Hayasaka said “no hurry.”

After the announcement of the shelving of the IPO, the share price of major shareholder Toshiba plummeted by 8.6%.

According to media estimates, Kioxia planned to sell its shares at a guide price of 3960 yen per share, with a total valuation of approximately 2.1 trillion yen.

Kioxia’s predecessor was Toshiba’s storage department, which invented NAND flash memory in 1987, and thus ranked second in the world, second only to Samsung. In 2018, a consortium led by Bain Capital acquired a controlling stake in Toshiba Storage for US$18 billion. On October 1 of the following year, the company officially changed its name to Kioxia. Toshiba retains 40% of the shares.

But after the name change, Kioxia’s performance was not satisfactory. Last year, the stock suffered losses for four consecutive fiscal quarters, with a net loss of US$1.83 billion for the year. Revenue did not improve until the last fiscal quarter.