Toshiba Memory Aiming for IPO in 3 Years

June 5, 2018

Tokyo- Toshiba Memory Corp., a former Toshiba Corp. subsidiary sold to a consortium led by U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital for 2 trillion yen, is aiming for an initial public offering in three years, its president, Yasuo Naruke, told a press conference on Monday.

"We'll accelerate technology development and expand production to keep up with the growing market," he said.

At the press conference, Yuji Sugimoto, head of Bain Capital's operations in Japan, mentioned a target of getting Toshiba Memory listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in a couple of years.

Sugimoto called on the flash memory company to continue to invest hundreds of billions of yen annually in equipment. It spent some 570 billion yen on equipment in fiscal 2017.

He suggested plans to rename Toshiba Memory by fiscal 2019, after the sale was completed last week.

Toshiba Memory, which has the second-largest share in the global market for low-cost high-volume NAND flash memory chips, will work to catch up with the industry leader, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co.

Its new board members were announced also on Monday, with three of them from Bain Capital, including Sugimoto. The other two are Naruke and Hiroshi Suzuki, chief executive officer of major Japanese precision equipment maker Hoya Corp., which holds a 9.9 pct stake in Toshiba Memory in terms of voting rights.

Sugimoto said that Toshiba Memory will soon begin talks with two Japanese government-backed bodies--Innovation Network Corp. of Japan and the Development Bank of Japan--which are considering investing in the chipmaker.

Meanwhile, he suggested that Bain Capital apparently aims to continue to lead the company's management, at least until the envisaged IPO, even if Toshiba Memory accepts investment from INCJ and the DBJ. Jiji Press