Scan the QR code with wechat < / P > < p > and share it with friends and circles of friends < / P > < p > Author: & nbsp; Du Yu < / P > < p > one of the most shocking news to the capital market after US stock market trading on Monday is that Softbank hopes to sell the British chip design company arm to American chip giant NVIDIA in a high-profile way. The reason is that regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union strongly oppose it < p > son Zhengyi, CEO of Softbank group, later said at the third quarter earnings conference on Tuesday afternoon local time that he planned to make an initial public offering of arm company before the end of the next fiscal year ending in March 2023. The ideal IPO location is NASDAQ < p > son Zhengyi: the listing of arm will be the most important IPO in the history of the chip industry, and the operating profit has doubled in the past two years < / P > < p > some media say that son Zhengyi has "transformed" the Softbank earnings conference into an investor roadshow before the listing of arm, trying to show that it doesn't matter if it is not sold to NVIDIA. The core chips of arm are designed in smart phones, electric vehicles Cloud computing and data centers have high demand: < / P > < p > "arm is entering a golden age. Arm will promote the revolution in cutting-edge fields such as cloud computing and metauniverse, and become the most important IPO in the history of the chip industry."

Sun Zhengyi said that the British chip designer ARM paid $32 billion in 2016. The original idea was to sell the company IPO, but chose to sell it privately because of COVID-19. p> < p > in September 2020, Softbank announced the sale of arm to NVIDIA with a transaction value of about $40 billion. As Softbank is expected to receive cash and NVIDIA shares, with the latter's share price rising, the transaction value reached $80 billion in late last year, which was originally the largest M & a transaction in the history of the chip industry. Some analysts say the current value of the deal is $66 billion < p > he was surprised to see that the FTC of the US Federal Trade Commission tried to sue to block the transaction last December. He was also surprised by the strong opposition of large technology companies relying on ARM chip design, such as Qualcomm and Microsoft, But from the positive aspects of arm's future IPO: < / P > < p > "we see strong opposition, just because arm is one of the most important and essential companies that most companies in the IT industry or silicon valley directly or indirectly rely on." < p > son Zhengyi said that arm is likely to be listed on Nasdaq, which is dominated by technology stocks, because many of arm's customers are in Silicon Valley. Choosing arm to be listed rather than "retained" is in the hope that external investors of Softbank vision fund can cash out through IPO, and vision fund holds a quarter of arm's shares. After listing, arm stock options can also be issued to arm employees as incentives < p > Softbank also revealed that after going through the difficult times of previous years, arm is expected to achieve revenue of US $2.5 billion in the current fiscal year ending March this year, an increase of 26% compared with us $1.98 billion in the previous year; Its operating profit has doubled in the past two years and is expected to reach $900 million this fiscal year. In the first nine months of the fiscal year ended December last year, arm's net sales soared 40% year-on-year to $2 billion < p > at the same time, when signing the sale contract in 2020, the $1.25 billion deposit paid by NVIDIA to Softbank will not be refunded, and this "breakup fee" will be recorded as Softbank's profit in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year. NVIDIA expects to include $1.36 billion in expenses in the first quarter of fiscal 2023 < p > Wall Street: arm is listed or cannot obtain the overvalued value sold to NVIDIA, which makes it more difficult for Softbank to raise money for the vision fund < / P > < p > on the day of the announcement of the failure of arm's sale to NVIDIA, the management of arm was reorganized rapidly. Rene Haas, who had seven years of working experience in NVIDIA and joined arm in 2013 as the head of the intellectual property department, became CEO, and Simon segars, the former CEO, was out. Haas said that no decision had been made on where arm would be listed and whether Softbank would continue to hold a majority stake after the listing < p > analysts generally worry that in the current environment in which global technology stocks are frustrated by the hawkish turn of the Federal Reserve, arm may not be able to obtain the overvalued value sold to NVIDIA if it chooses to make an IPO. People close to Softbank said that the relatively higher valuation of technology stocks in the US market may be one of the reasons why Softbank did not want to consider listing arm in the UK < p > Fumio Matsumoto, chief strategist of Okasan securities, said that whether the volatile semiconductor business can remain popular this year has added uncertainty to arm's IPO, which makes the timing of large-scale IPO less ideal. Moreover, due to the potential synergy, the internal strategic buyers of the chip industry might have paid a higher price for arm than the IPO < p > at the same time, the failure to privately sell arm has also put pressure on Softbank to raise funds for vision fund. The existing portfolio valuation of the fund is experiencing setbacks. The share prices of office space sharing company Wework, Southeast Asia online car Hailing service grab and German used car e-commerce platform auto1 fell last quarter. Kirk boodry, a technology analyst at REDEX holdings, worried that arm's switch to IPO might affect Softbank's stock repurchase, "because the sale of arm seems to be the main source of new funds." < p > in addition, NVIDIA's inability to own arm is also a great loss of its development strategy. NVIDIA CEO Huang Renxun originally hoped to use arm's chip processor design to consolidate the company's competitive advantage in the data center chip market and further compete with Intel and AMD. In the data center, NVIDIA's graphics processor has become an important tool for artificial intelligence and machine learning < p > NVIDIA, which jumped to the highest market capitalization chip company in the United States, said it would retain its arm technology license for 20 years despite the acquisition failure. Angelo Zino, an analyst at CFRA research, said that the failure to acquire arm was a missed opportunity for NVIDIA, but the transaction failure eliminated the suspense of the stock, and investors can now "focus on the attractive fundamentals of the company"

's public information, in December last year, the US FTC filed a lawsuit against NVIDIA's acquisition of ARM, saying that competition in emerging markets such as autopilot chips and new network chips could be damaged. The UK extended the review time of the transaction last year and expanded the scope of the review to the field of national security. Some British politicians regard arm as a national strategic asset and hope it will be listed in London. Large technology companies opposed to NVIDIA's acquisition of arm believe that NVIDIA will gain an unfair advantage by having the priority of ARM technology < p > Reuters also said that the failure of the transaction once again highlighted the difficulties of enterprises in persuading antitrust regulators and the government to approve large-scale Technology Mergers and acquisitions, especially in the semiconductor industry. Due to regulatory obstacles, Qualcomm gave up its acquisition of NXP semiconductor for us $44 billion in 2018, and former US President trump also prevented microchip manufacturer Broadcom from acquiring Qualcomm议。