GlobalFoundries Inc. and major shareholder Mubadala Investment Co. raised almost $2.6 billion in an initial public offering, pricing the chipmaker’s shares at the top of a marketed range.
The company and Mubadala sold 55 million shares for $47 each after marketing them for $42 to $47, according to a statement confirming an earlier report.
At $47 a share, GlobalFoundries has a market value of more than $25 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The listing is the third biggest on a US exchange this year, topped only by South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang Inc.’s $4.55bn IPO and Chinese ride-hailing company DiDi Global Inc.’s $4.44bn raise, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That doesn’t include blank-check and similar companies.
GlobalFoundries had planned to sell 33 million shares while Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala was to sell 22 million shares, according to its filings. Mubadala will control more than 89 percent of the company’s shares after the IPO.
Mubadala’s Portion
That mix was modified, according to the statement, with the company selling 2.75 million fewer shares than planned and Mubadala making up the difference.
Funds managed by BlackRock Inc., Columbia Management Investment Advisers, Fidelity Management, an affiliate of Koch Industries Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. also indicated an interest in buying a combined $1.05bn of the shares in the offering as cornerstone investors, the filings show.
Silver Lake separately agreed to purchase $75mn of stock in a concurrent private placement at the IPO price.
The chipmaker was created by purchasing the manufacturing operations of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in 2009 and later combining it with Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor. Mubadala was planning for the business to be valued in a listing at around $30bn.
Chip Shortage
GlobalFoundries is appealing to public-market investors as interest in the semiconductor industry hits an all-time high. Shortages caused by a surge in demand for electronics during coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and insufficient supply have made chip factories more valuable to the economy.
For the first half of the year, GlobalFoundries had a net loss of $30mn on revenue of about $3bn, compared with a loss of $534mn on $2.7bn in revenue a year earlier, according to the filings.
Contract chipmakers like GlobalFoundries fabricate semiconductors for large technology companies such as Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. currently dominate the market, and Intel Corp. has ambitions to become a bigger force in that area too.
GlobalFoundries previously gave up on the kind of leading-edge production that would match the capabilities of Taiwan Semiconductor or Samsung. Instead, it’s serving the market for less advanced chips, which are increasingly critical to carmakers and other industries.
The IPO is being led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG. The company’s shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol GFS.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Finance World staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
