British chip designer Arm sets IPO price at $51 a share

SAN FRANCISCO: British chip designing giant Arm has set a price of $51 a share as it gets prepared for the biggest US initial public offering (IPO) of the year.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Arm would be valued at $54.5 billion on a fully diluted basis at this price.

“That is below the $64 billion Arm owner SoftBank Group recently valued the company at when it bought out a stake held by its Vision Fund,” the report said.

The Japanese investment giant SoftBank acquired Arm for $31 billion in 2016.

Customers like Apple, Google, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, TSMC, and Samsung have all said they will buy ARM shares.

Arm has filed for an IPO listing with Nasdaq, which is touted as the year’s biggest. Analysts expect Arm’s IPO to be the biggest of 2023.

The company has developed and licensed high-performance, low-cost, and energy-efficient central processing unit (CPU) products and related technology.

Arm was supposed to be acquired by graphics chip giant Nvidia for $40 billion in 2020, but the deal was called off in February 2022, owing to “significant regulatory challenges preventing the consummation of the transaction”.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had sued to block Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of Arm from Softbank on antitrust grounds.

Arm is a core supplier of architecture technology to most semiconductor companies. Its Arm instruction set is at the core of nearly all mobile processors powering smartphones, including those made by Apple and Android devices that use Qualcomm chips.

Arm is reportedly developing its own chip, aiming to showcase the capabilities of its designs and attract new customers.