Kioxia favours IPO over Western Digital merger offer: Paper

TOKYO: Japan’s Kioxia Holdings Corp, the world’s second-largest maker of NAND flash memory chips, plans to push ahead with an initial public offering (IPO) rather than a stock merger with Western Digital, the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported on Friday.

Kioxia is planning to offer its shares in November after a general election in Japan because it believes stock markets will rise after that national poll, the Nikkan Kogyo reported, without citing any sources.

Asked about the report, a spokesperson for Kioxia reiterated previous comments by the company it was considering the appropriate timing for an IPO that it shelved in 2020 amid U.S.-China trade tensions.