Kokusai Electric, a Japanese builder of tools for making semiconductors, went public on Wednesday in Tokyo’s largest public offering in five years.
The listing was set to be worth at least 108 billion yen (USD 721 million), with its parent US investor KKR selling 58.8 million of the firm’s shares for the initial offering price of 1,840 yen each.
On Wednesday morning, shares were trading at 2,281 yen, up 24% from the offering price.
It was Japan’s biggest share offering since the 2.65-trillion-yen listing of SoftBank Corp in 2018.
IPO proceeds this year are about three times higher than the same period in 2022, according to Bloomberg.
Private equity group KKR in 2018 paid around 260 billion yen for Kokusai, the former unit of Japanese engineering conglomerate Hitachi.
The IPO comes as Japan follows the United States in seeking to tighten exports of semiconductor-related products to China.
Machines for deposition and heat treatment are included in the list, potentially affecting the 34% of sales Kokusai gets from China, Bloomberg reported.
KKR had tried to sell Kokusai to US semiconductor firm Applied Materials, but Chinese anti-trust authorities blocked the move, which was dropped in 2021.
