NEW YORK: SoftBank Group Corp’s chip designer Arm Holdings priced its US initial public offering (IPO) at US$51 per share on Wednesday afternoon at the top end of its indicated price range, people familiar with the matter said.
The IPO raised US$4.87 billion for SoftBank based on 95.5 million shares sold. It infers a valuation for Arm on a fully diluted basis of US$54.5 billion, making it the largest US stock market debut since electric car maker Rivian Automotive in 2021.
The sources requested anonymity ahead of an official announcement. Arm and SoftBank declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal erroneously reported earlier that Arm was preparing to price its IPO at US$52 per share, which would have been over its indicated range. Reuters sources said that Arm discussed pricing the offering at US$52 per share in a meeting with its investment banks, before settling at US$51.
Arm’s shares are scheduled to start trading in New York on Thursday.
The IPO’s valuation represents a climb-down from the US$64 billion valuation at which SoftBank last month acquired the 25 per cent stake it did not already own in the company from the US$100 billion Vision Fund it manages.
Yet even with this lower valuation, SoftBank would fare better than its US$40 billion deal to sell Arm to Nvidia Corp , which it abandoned last year amid opposition from antitrust regulators. SoftBank took Arm private in 2016 for US$32 billion.
Arm has already signed up many of its major clients as cornerstone investors in its IPO, including Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Samsung Electronics.
