armsthe British microprocessor company owned by Japan’s Softbank, has petitioned the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), go public and list on Nasdaq under “ARM”.
At the moment, Arm’s listing conditions are confidential, but media such as Bloomberg state that the company plans to go public during the month of September and aims to reach a valuation of between 60,000 and 70,000 million dollars.
The company has been preparing its IPO for more than a year after the purchase failure by Nvidia. The firm, remember, ended up aborting the acquisition, valued at 40,000 million dollars, due to pressure from UK regulators, the European Commission and the FTC. From the moment of the announcement, British politicians urged Arm to be listed on the London Stock Exchange. However, Softbank, of Japanese origin and who acquired Arm in 2016 for about 32,000 million dollars, did not confirm anything in this regard.
It was in March 2023, a year after the announcement of the IPO, when the semiconductor manufacturer confirmed its intention to list in New York. With this decision, Softbank intends to recover its investment in the purchase of Arm, since US investors tend to offer a higher valuation to the shares of those companies in the technology sector. Arm, yes, has ensured to maintain its British essence and continue with its headquarters in London.
Big tech could be interested in Arm
Arm’s IPO promises to be one of the largest in the United States in years. In fact, nothing like this has been seen since the Ukrainian war began, and since Rivian, an electric mobility company, debuted on the stock market in 2021 with shares that had an initial value of $78 per share. In this way, they obtained some 11,900 million dollars raised in the first starts and managed to be valued at 86,000 million dollars. An amount that exceeded firms such as General Motors or Ford.
Arm, on the other hand, plays to an important advantage: investor interest in next-generation semiconductors. And especially, by those intended to improve AI tools. The company, in fact, confirmed that its technology would be essential for artificial intelligence applications.
Becoming a publicly-offered company would also allow large technology companies, such as Apple or Samsung, Acquire shares in order to have a percentage of participation about one of the most important semiconductor companies in the market. It is, in fact, something Nvidia has been considering for months after the failed purchase attempt.