Another chip designer may be poised to list in New York on the heels of Arm’s blockbuster initial public offering last week, with microchip specialist Imagination Technologies registering to go public, according to multiple reports.
Imagination is a chip designer with customers including tech giant
Apple
(ticker: AAPL). The group is U.K.-based and licenses its semiconductor intellectual property to other companies. It’s a business model similar to that of
Arm
(ARM), the chip designer that secured a $54 billion valuation when it went public last week in the biggest IPO this year—which Wall Street is hoping will reinvigorate capital markets and lead to more listings.
Imagination has confidentially registered to go public in New York, the U.K.’s Sunday Telegraph first reported. It would mark a return to public markets after the company was delisted in 2017 from the London Stock Exchange in a $742 million take-private by China-backed investment group Canyon Bridge. Imagination did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Barron’s.
The investor frenzy over artificial intelligence this year has helped propel shares in chip companies like
Nvidia
(NVDA), and added wind to the sails of Arm as it readied to go public, though that company has a core focus on mobile processors. Should it IPO, Imagination may be a more direct play on AI, with the company listing neural network accelerators—which power AI for applications across self-driving cars and cloud computing—among its four key areas.
Imagination reported annual revenue of £120 million ($149 million) for 2022, up from £111 million in 2021, per U.K. filings made last week. “Some of the markets we target are more resilient than the overall semiconductor market, notably automotive,” the group said in its outlook.
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]
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