By Anirban Sen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – SoftBank Group Corp’s chip designer Arm Holdings Plc was discussing pricing its U.S. initial public offering (IPO) at $52 per share on Wednesday afternoon in a meeting with its investment bankers, a person familiar with the matter said.
If this pricing is finalized, it would be above Arm’s indicated $47-$51 price range and would raise $4.97 billion for SoftBank, based on 95.5 million shares sold.
It would infer a valuation on Arm on a fully diluted basis of $55.5 billion, making it the largest stock market debut since electric car maker Rivian Automotive Inc in 2021.
The source requested anonymity because the deliberations are confidential. Arm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Arm was preparing to price its IPO at $52 per share.
Arm’s shares are scheduled to start trading in New York on Thursday.
The IPO’s valuation would represent a climb-down from the $64 billion valuation at which SoftBank last month acquired the 25% stake it did not already own in the company from the $100 billion Vision Fund it manages.
Yet even with this lower valuation, SoftBank would fare better than its $40 billion deal to sell Arm to Nvidia Corp, which it abandoned last year amid opposition from antitrust regulators. SoftBank took Arm private in 2016 for $32 billion.
Arm has already signed up many of its major clients as cornerstone investors in its IPO, including Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Samsung Electronics.
(Reporting by Anirban Sen; Editing by Sandra Maler)
