Chip stocks rebounded in overnight trading with SanDisk up 2%; Micron trimmed losses to 1.2% after an initial decline of 5%.
Kioxia Holdings Corp., the world’s best performing major stock this year, said it would list its shares in the US as it reaps the benefits of a global memory chip shortage that’s ratcheted up prices of the vital component to historic highs.
The company said it was preparing to list American depositary shares as it forecast operating profit of ¥1.3 trillion ($8.2 billion) for the quarter ending in June, surpassing the average analyst estimate. It also posted record earnings of ¥596.8 billion for the quarter ending in March, beating estimates.
The Tokyo-based firm’s meteoric rise encapsulates the booming demand for memory as hyperscalers rush to build AI infrastructure. Kioxia’s shares are up about 300% so far this year. Analysts on average expect the company to record an operating profit of ¥4.2 trillion in 2026, which would put it above Toyota Motor Corp. as Japan’s top profit generator.
The former unit of Toshiba Corp.’s chip business has historically focused on NAND, the fast storage technology that replaced hard drives in everything from PCs and laptops to large-scale data centers.
Rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. also make DRAM, which performs a similar function. However, Korean firms have recently allocated more resources to high bandwidth memory, a component of advanced AI processors, allowing Kioxia to field more orders in the NAND market.
Investors have rushed to buy Kioxia’s shares since their debut in December 2024 because they view NAND as the next chip component to benefit from the AI boom, said Iwai Cosmo Securities analyst Kazuyoshi Saito.
“Kioxia’s NAND has strengths including production costs that are 20%-30% lower than those of its competitors, higher storage capacity per unit area, and data read and write speeds that are 10%-20% faster than rival products,” he said.
