Banco Santander has slipped into the biggest stock market party on Wall Street in 2023 with the IPO of the British ARM. The Spanish bank is part of the cohort of banks contracted by Softbank for the placement and sale of shares of the chip designer, which will reach a valuation of between 60,000 and 70,000 million dollars.
The technology company will be listed on the Nasdaq in September through ADSs, American certificates for shares for foreign companies, and will keep the Japanese company as its reference partner, although it will incorporate large groups with which it has been negotiating this summer such as Amazon, Apple or Alphabet, among others.
As stated in the brochure of the operation, at the head of the operation are the British Barclays, the Japanese Mizuho and the American firms Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. On a second level is the entity chaired by Ana Botín together with Bank of America, Citigroup, Jefferies, Deutsche Bank, BNP, Credit Agricole, Natixis, Sumitomo Nikko and MUFG. Another 14 entities participate in a third level of placement, according to the brochure.
In total, 28 entities globally that will seek the support of investors around the world for ARM to go public again after seven years off the stock market screens. Santander US Capital Markets LLC, the US subsidiary of the Cantabrian group, will be in charge of participating in the placement process aimed at the international and retail institutional public in the United States
According to Bloomberg, the distribution of commissions will be the same for the firms depending on the level they occupy, if they ensure the operation or only intermediary the placement. For Santander, ARM’s IPO will mean reissuing its presence in the first line after the German Porsche was placed twelve months ago.
Founded in 1990, ARM began as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer, and VLSI Technology. It first went public in 1998 through a dual listing on the London Stock Exchange and the US Nasdaq. It was listed that way until 2016, when Masayoshi Son’s Japanese SoftBank Group bought the company at a valuation of $32 billion and delisted it.
Its valuation has doubled seven years later. THIS SAME WEEK HAS HAD OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION OF THIS TASACIACIA, After Softbank Has Repurchased 25% Of Arm From The Vision Fund Capital Fund -Which Shares Softban K With Saudi Arabia- For 16,000 Million And A Valuation 100% Of 64,000 Million In Line With what is expected for the new debut.
Arm had 5,963 full-time employees in North America, Europe and Asia at the end of the first quarter, the majority of them (80%) engineers focused on research, design and technical innovation. The company has production, research and development (R&D) centers in the UK, Europe, North America, India and Asia-Pacific, although its headquarters are in the British city of Cambridge.
According to data filed with the SEC, ARM’s total revenues were relatively flat at $2.679 million annually at the end of its fiscal 2023 year that ended in March, compared with $2.703 million for fiscal 2022. As a percentage of total revenue, gross margin was 96% and operating profit margin was 25%. The recurring net profit was around 524 million dollars, slightly less than the 676 million of the previous year and in line with the 544 million of 2021.
According to data revealed by ARM, more than 260 companies used chips based on its technology, including Amazon, Alphabet, Qualcomm, Apple, Nvidia, Samsunb, and Advanced Micro Devices, among others. The British company was instrumental in developing more efficient chips for mobile phones that revolutionized the computer industry two decades ago.
In fact, ARM remembers that today 99% of smartphones use its design and its products reach 70% of the population. The British group boasts of having designed more than 250,000 million chips in its history. Only in the last year, more than 30,000 million chips based on ARM technology left factories around the world, although they cover sectors such as the automobile, the Internet of Things (IoT) and now in developments related to the artificial intelligence.
