Much-anticipated plans to list the British chip designer Arm Ltd on the stock exchange have been delayed by managers who fear the global economic downturn and a slump in tech shares could spook potential investors.
The Cambridge-based company wrote to private shareholders a few days ago, saying the initial public offering (IPO), which could value the company at up to US$40 billion, would not take place until well into next year.
The company was widely expected to float as soon as the first quarter of next year.
The delay would raise anxiety among UK ministers, who have lobbied the company to list on the London Stock Exchange to help secure the city’s reputation as a potential destination for high-profile tech IPOs over rivals.
“Clearly, we want to IPO as soon as possible. But given the current global economic uncertainty, given the state of financial markets, that’s probably now unlikely to happen before the end of March 2023,” Arm’s head of investor relations Ian Thornton told investors.
“However, preparations for the IPO are going very well. They’re advanced. And we are fully committed to floating sometime in 2023,” he added.
A spokesperson for Arm confirmed the delay.
The delay was first reported by the Mail on Sunday.
Analysts have previously estimated that Arm — whose chip designs are used by more than 500 clients, including Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics Co and Google, in products ranging from tablet computers and mobile phones to cars and smart TVs — could be worth up to US$40 billion when it goes public.
However, shares in big tech companies, including Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc, Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc and Amazon.com Inc have slumped this year, amid fears that surging inflation, rising interest rates and economic uncertainty would hit consumer demand and advertising revenues.
Those same conditions, sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a subsequent rise in energy prices, have raised concerns about a global economic downturn. The Office for Budget Responsibility last week said that the UK had already fallen into a recession that would last more than a year, and push half a million people out of work.
The delay to Arm’s IPO plans would put additional pressure on its owner, Softbank Group Corp, which bought the chip company for US$32 billion in 2016, but has suffered from a string of bad investments.
This summer, it emerged that then-British prime minister Boris Johnson joined lobbying efforts already under way by London Stock Exchange executives, government departments and senior officials to try to persuade Arm to float its shares in London.
Liz Truss attempted to revive those discussions before she resigned last month from her short-lived tenure as Johnson’s successor.
US-based tech giant Google said yesterday that its efforts to build four underseas cables to connect Taiwan with the world had created more than 64,000 jobs and generated about US$26 billion in GDP for Taiwan as of 2021. The US company has transformed Taiwan into a strategic cloud infrastructure hub in the world. The four undersea cables are part of the company’s investments in cloud infrastructure in Taiwan, and on the back of the undersea cables, a data center and a Google Cloud Region, which is a geographic area in which Google provides infrastructure and services for deploying applications, Google said in
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) largely omitted mention of its controversial Mate 60 smartphone series at a grand showcase of its new consumer products yesterday. The Shenzhen-based company would increase smartphone production in response to demand, said consumer division chief Richard Yu (余承東), without naming the handset triggering that surge. The Mate 60 Pro earned international notoriety with its advanced made-in-China processor last month, causing concern in Washington about Huawei’s progress toward developing in-house chipmaking capabilities despite US trade curbs. Huawei’s new phones have fired up the company’s sales and were among the top sellers in China in the week before Apple Inc’s
SLUMP: The electronics, machinery and traditional industries posted the largest decline in the past year; overall, sectors showed gains over the previous month Taiwan’s industrial production index decreased 10.53 percent year-on-year to 91.38 last month, falling for a 15th consecutive month on an annual basis, as weak global economic growth continued to weigh on end-market demand and investment momentum, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday. The industrial production index gauges output in Taiwan’s four main industries: manufacturing, electricity and gas supply, water supply, and mining and quarrying. Last month’s decline was the smallest contraction since March when the index dropped 16.03 percent from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, the index rose 7.28 percent, marking a second straight month of improvement,
Micron Technology Inc on Wednesday predicted a steeper loss than anticipated in the current quarter, indicating that an industry slump is still weighing on the largest US maker of memory chips. The company projected a fiscal first-quarter loss of as much as US$1.14 a share, excluding some items. Analysts had estimated a US$0.96 loss. On the bright side, revenue is expected to start recovering in the period. Micron predicted sales of US$4.2 billion to US$4.6 billion, compared with an estimate of US$4.21 billion. For Micron and competitors Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc, this year has been brutal. Customers in their
RSS