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Japanese chipmaker Kioxia, which is majority owned by private equity firm Bain Capital, is said to be getting ready to list its shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Reuters reported.
The application could come as soon as August, with the eventual initial public offering happening at the end of October, the news outlet added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Kioxia, which makes memory chips, had sought to restart talks to merge with Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) earlier this year, but strategic investor SK Hynix has opposed a merger.
The talks were first halted in October after the deal failed to secure approval from SK Hynix. The companies were also unable to agree on the merger’s conditions with Bain Capital, which owns approximately 56% of Kioxia, according to a Nikkei report at the time.
SK Hynix has said it opposed the merger of Kioxia and Western Digital’s flash memory business due to the impact on the value of the company’s investment.
Western Digital said in March that its plan (first laid out in October 2023) to create two independent, publicly traded companies was on track to occur during the second-half of 2024.
If Kioxia goes public later this year, it would be the second time it attempted to do so after Bain acquired the unit from parent company Toshiba in 2018. It first tried to go public in 2020, but postponed a listing due to issues brought on by the pandemic and trade tensions between the U.S. and China.
