by Anirban Sen and Echo Wang
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Semiconductor maker Arm, owned by SoftBank, has filed a confidential IPO application with U.S. regulators, people familiar with the matter said on Saturday, which would pave the way for the most important IPO of the year.
SoftBank announced plans in March to take Arm to the US stock market, but filings for the IPO show a willingness to move forward despite unfavorable market conditions.
IPOs in the United States, excluding operations for companies specifically intended for acquisitions, are down 22% since the start of the year to just $2.35 billion, according to Dealogic. Despite some signs of market recovery, the current market volatility and economic uncertainties are still deterring many candidates.
Arm plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq by the end of the year and raise between $8 billion and $10 billion, the sources said.
These, however, state that the exact timing and size of the IPO still depends on market conditions.
SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.
SoftBank has been seeking to take Arm public since the failure last year of its plan to sell the semiconductor designer to Nvidia Corp for $40 billion amid objections from U.S. and European antitrust authorities.
Since then, Arm has performed above the industry average thanks in particular to its specialization in data center servers, and its IPO should help support Softbank’s activity. The entity’s sales over the last quarter increased by 28%.
( Laetitia Volga and Gilles Guillaume)
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