SoftBank’s Arm aims to raise $8 billion in US IPO

SoftBank Group Corp.’s Arm Ltd. is seeking to raise at least $8 billion in a US initial public offering, Reuters reported.

The British chip designer is expected to confidentially submit paperwork for its IPO in late April with the listing expected to take place later this year, the news agency said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. An exact timing will be determined by market conditions, according to the report.

The reported size of the listing would make Arm one of the largest IPOs in the US of the last decade. Bankers had pitched a valuation of between $30 billion to $70 billion for the listing, Bloomberg reported last week, a wide range that underlines the challenges of valuing the firm against a backdrop of volatile semiconductor equity prices.

Arm, whose technology is found in most of the world’s smartphones and is becoming more pervasive across the electronics industry, confirmed last week plans to list solely in the US, rejecting calls from the UK government to conduct a dual listing in its home market.

Tokyo-based SoftBank spent $32 billion to buy the business in 2016. At the time, it promised UK regulators that it would create more jobs there and not move the headquarters.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. are expected to be the lead underwriters for the IPO, Reuters said. Barclays, JPMorgan and SoftBank didn’t immediately respond to Reuters’s requests for comment, while Arm, Goldman and Mizuho declined to comment to the news agency.