Arm Holdings Plc priced its initial public offering at the top end of its range to raise $4.87 billion in the largest listing of the year, one that could give a major lift to long-suffering equity markets.
Shares of the Softbank-backed chip designer are likely to start trading later tonight on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol Arm.
Arm sold 95.5 million American Depositary Shares for $51 apiece, which is the higher end of the proposed IPO price range of $47-$51. At the higher end, Arm is valued at about $54.5 billion, as per Bloomberg News calculations. Underwriters have the option to buy as many as 7 million additional shares.
While Arm had previously aimed to raise $8 billion to $10 billion, that target was lowered at least in part because SoftBank decided to buy the roughly 25 percent stake held by its Vision Fund and then hold onto a larger portion of the shares in the company.
After the IPO, SoftBank will still control about 90% of the company’s shares, Arm said in its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Arm was setting aside more than $700 million of the stock in the IPO to be bought by some of its biggest customers, including Intel Corp., Apple Inc., Nvidia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The offering is being led by Barclays Plc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. Raine Securities LLC is also acting as financial adviser in connection with the IPO.
The IPO is the world’s biggest this year, surpassing the $4.37 billion listing by Johnson & Johnson consumer health spinoff Kenvue Inc. Arm’s IPO could also be a catalyst for IPOs from dozens of tech startups and other companies whose plans to go public in the US have been stuck during the deepest, longest listing trough since the financial crisis in 2009.
Online grocery-delivery firm Instacart Inc., marketing and data automation provider Klaviyo, Vietnam-based internet startup VNG Ltd. and footwear maker Birkenstock Holding Ltd. have all filed to go public.
SoftBank, which acquired Arm seven years ago for $32 billion, has helped grow the chip designer and change its business model. A successful debut by Arm would provide a windfall for SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, whose Vision Fund lost a record $30 billion last year.
Arm’s listing is the largest in the US since electric-vehicle maker Rivian Automotive Inc.’s $13.7 billion offering in October 2021. The IPO is also set to rank among the tech industry’s largest-ever, though still well below the two biggest: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s $25 billion 2014 offering and 2012’s $16 billion debut by Meta Platforms Inc., then known as Facebook Inc.
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