(Yicai) July 28 -- Chengxin Memory Technology established a number of records when the designer of flash memory chips debuted on Shanghai's Nasdaq-style Star Market yesterday, including becoming the Chinese mainland’s most valuable listed company.

Turnover of CXMT's shares exceeded CNY1.41 trillion (USD208.6 billion), topping the CNY1 trillion mark within one hour and becoming the first mainland stock to record single-day turnover of more than CNY1 trillion. Just over two-thirds of the equity changed hands.

The Hefei-based company sold 6.688 billion shares in its initial pubic offering, priced at CNY8.66 (USD1.27) apiece. Gross proceeds before the greenshoe option stood at CNY57.9 billion (USD8.6 billion), surpassing the CNY53.2 billion that fellow chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation scored in its Star Market IPO in 2020, making CXMT the biggest mainland offering in nearly 19 years and the largest in Asia this year.

CXMT [SHA: 688825] ended 4.1 percent lower today at CNY47 (USD6.94) per share, after soaring 466 percent yesterday. With a market capitalization of CNY3.28 trillion, CXMT blew past SMIC at CNY1.23 trillion and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China at about CNY2.76 trillion to become China's most valuable listed firm.

CXMT also topped Intel's USD462.4 billion valuation at yesterday’s close. It was the first time that a Chinese mainland-listed technology company was worth more than its foreign counterparts. At yesterday's peak of CNY3.66 trillion, CXMT briefly moved ahead of Tencent Holdings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

CXMT accounted for nearly 18 percent of the Star Market's total capitalization of CNY18.48 trillion (USD2.73 trillion) and 2 percent of all mainland stocks at yesterday’s close. It is now the constituent stock with the highest weighting in the Star Market's history.

The firm had an 8 percent share of global dynamic random-access memory sales in the first quarter of this year, ranking fourth after Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology, according to data from tech market research and consulting firm Omdia.

It had revenue of CNY50.8 billion in the three months ended March 31, up 719 percent from a year earlier, with net profit reaching CNY24.8 billion, a 13-fold increase on last year’s total, according to the company's listing prospectus.

CXMT expects first-half revenue to have surged 613 percent to 677 percent to between CNY110 billion and CNY120 billion from a year ago. Net profit likely jumped by as much as 2,544 percent to between CNY50 billion and CNY57 billion.

Mounting global demand for computing power and capacity reallocation by major global players created supply tightness across DRAM products, leading to higher prices, CXMT explained. The sustained expansion in production and sales and the ongoing optimization of the company's product mix also fueled rapid revenue growth.

As China's only integrated device manufacturer able to mass produce DRAM, CXMT's listing is a milestone for the country's semiconductor industry, according to analysts. It reshapes the nearly 30-year-old oligopoly that has long defined the global DRAM market.

Following the listing, CXMT's vast capital expenditure is set to accelerate the domestic adoption of homegrown semiconductor equipment and materials. Its capacity expansion drive will also forge deeper links between midstream packaging and testing vendors, downstream memory module manufacturers, and key domestic wafer fabs. This will further refine China's integrated circuit ecosystem and propel its IC industry chain toward a higher level of development.

Editor: Futura Costaglione