Arm starts process for listing in US in September with City of London snubbed

SoftBank-owned Arm Holdings, the Cambridge-based chip designer with an extraordinary client list that includes the world’s major smartphone, computer and games console makers, has filed the paperwork for a US listing in September.

The decision means that the London Stock Exchange has been sidelined - a blow to the City and to the government - in what looks set to be the biggest flotation of recent years (and the largest tech offering since Alibaba in 2014).

Based on Fulbourn Road, the filing of the registration document yesterday (August 21) is an extraordinary development in what has been a roller-coaster few years for the premier league semiconductor and software design company. Acquired in 2016 by Japanese company SoftBank, it looked as though NVIDIA’s audacious $40bn bid in 2020 would go ahead. However the bid set off a firestorm of discussion about how the chip designer would survive if it was owned by another chip developer, and in 2022 the NVIDIA bid was abandoned.

Founded in 1990 from the ashes of the Cambridge-driven home computer revolution - Sinclair and Acorn were already busted flushes - Arm’s extraordinary success, predicated on its designing chips for rival companies, has seen annual revenue rise to $2.8bn, a quarter of a trillion chip designs shipped (they are built in foundries, the largest of which is located in Taiwan), a staff count of 5,700 and more than 1,000 technology partners.

Arm’s announcement said: “Arm Holdings Limited (‘Arm’) today announced that it has publicly filed a registration statement on Form F-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) relating to the proposed initial public offering of American depositary shares (‘ADS’) representing its ordinary shares. Arm has applied to list the ADSs on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ‘ARM’. The number of ADSs to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have yet to be determined.

“Raine Securities LLC is acting as financial advisor in connection with the proposed offering. Barclays, Goldman Sachs & Co LLC, JP Morgan, and Mizuho are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering.”

The proposed offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. A valuation of between $60bn (£47bn) to $70bn is expected. The IPO (initial public offering) will mean that next month, Arm will have a stock market listing for the first time since 2016. Prior to the SoftBank takeover, it was listed in both London and New York for 18 years.

This time, it will step into the world’s biggest financial arena, with the number of shares and their price range now eagerly awaited.