Shares in Kokusai Electric jumped as much as 32 per cent on its stock market debut in Tokyo on Wednesday, valuing the chip equipment maker at $3.6bn and making it Japan’s biggest initial public offering in five years.
Kokusai was bought by US private equity firm KKR in 2017 from Japan’s Hitachi, which was selling off non-core assets in an effort to streamline its business. The deal had valued Kokusai at ¥257bn, or roughly $1.7bn.
On Wednesday Kokusai raised ¥108bn, after the IPO was priced at ¥1,840 a share, allowing KKR to reduce its stake in the chip tool maker from 73.2 per cent to 47.6 per cent.
Read the full story on the Financial Times here.