British semiconductor designer Arm Holdings has officially filed for a Nasdaq listing with the US regulators.
It marks one of the last steps before the Softbank-owned technology multinational goes to the public arena for the first time since 2016, when SoftBank took the group private in a US$32 billion deal.
Arm is seeking a valuation as high as US$70 billion (£55 billion) through an initial public offering (IPO), which, if completed this year, would be the number-one deal globally in 2023 and the biggest since 2021.
Underwriting the IPO is a who’s who of the global financial services sector, including Barclays PLC (LSE:BARC), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Bank of America, Citi, Jefferies, HSBC, BNP Paribas and around two dozen more major firms.
In a 229-page prospectus, Arm outlined the investment case for a company whose semiconductor architecture is in practically every smartphone on the face of the Earth, not to mention millions of tablets, PCs, data centres, networking equipment and even vehicles.
The largest technology companies in the world, be that Amazon and Alphabet, or Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung, rely on Arm architecture.
To get an idea of Arm’s reach, more than 30.5 billion Arm-based microchips were shipped in the financial year ending 31 March 2023, which was an improvement from the 29.1 billion shipped in the previous financial year.
Over 250 billion chips have been cumulatively shipped over Arm’s lifespan.
Arm’s licences brought in US$2.67 billion in the last financial year, which was actually a 0.9% year-on-year drop. Though operating income increased from US$633 million to US$671 million, net income fell more than 22% to US$524 million.
This was mainly down to income losses from equity investments.
Standard among semiconductor companies, the bulk of Arm’s operating expenses go to research and development. The company spent more than US$1.1 billion on R&D in the last financial year.
Arm had a book value of US$4.05 billion worth of shareholder’s equity as of 31 March, comprising US$6.87 billion in total assets and US$2.815 billion in total liabilities.
Once public, Arm will trade under the ticker symbol ARM.