Chip designer Arm saw its shares rocket after its initial public offering on Thursday. Arm stock rose nearly 25% in its first day of trading.
The Arm IPO priced 95.5 million shares at $51 apiece, which was the high end of its expected range of $45 to $51. That gave Arm an initial valuation of $54.5 billion.
The IPO raised nearly $5 billion for majority owner SoftBank, which still owns 90% of Arm stock.
On the stock market today, Arm stock jumped 24.7% to close at 63.59.
Market watchers questioned Arm's initial valuation, noting that it is 36% higher than what Nvidia had offered to pay for the company last year.
"It's hard to convince the market to pay such huge premiums when you're not growing as a company," said Daniel Newman, chief executive of research and advisory firm Futurum Group.
Arm's revenue dipped a fraction to $2.68 billion in its fiscal 2023 ended March 31, amid weak smartphone sales.
Arm Stock Valuation 'Not Based On Fundamentals'
Arm's chip designs are used by every major semiconductor designer including Apple, AMD, Qualcomm, Nvidia and many more.
Arm now gets 63% of its revenue from royalties and 37% from licensing. Royalties enable Arm to get a payment per chip sold. Licensing involves giving customers access to its portfolio of intellectual property for developing Arm-based processors.
Research firm New Constructs said the Arm stock valuation is "based more on SoftBank's self-dealing in private markets to manipulate the valuation higher than the fundamentals of the company."
"We believe investors should avoid this IPO, as we see very limited upside ahead, as there are plenty of other companies in the tech sector that offer investors growth, but at a reasonable valuation," New Constructs analysts said in a report.
The Arm stock IPO is the first of a trio of tech IPOs hitting the market this month. Next week, grocery delivery company Instacart and marketing software firm Klaviyo are due to go public.
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