Kioxia Market Cap Falls to a Third of June Peak as CXMT Rises

Japanese memory chip maker Kioxia Holdings' market value has shrunk to one-third of the peak it reached about four months ago, Nikkei Asia reported on Oct. 16, as rising interest rates threaten data centers' business model and Chinese competitors close in.

That peak sat in June, when Kioxia briefly overtook Toyota Motor to become Japan's most valuable listed company. The Nikkei subhead reads: "Rising cost of data center debt also poses a risk to memory supplier." CXMT is the Chinese rival Nikkei flags.

The dissonance is that the fundamentals have not yet cracked. Kioxia reports fiscal Q2 results on Oct. 30 at 18:45 Japan time. Earlier this week, S&P Global Ratings raised Kioxia's long-term issuer rating to "BBB" with a "Positive" outlook, and JPMorgan told clients the pullback is "a medium-term buying opportunity" and recommends overweighting the stock on a six-month horizon, per ad-hoc-news coverage. Shares still dropped 4.2% to 76.20 euros in that session, for about a 21% loss over the past week.

Our tracker has carried 332 China AI stories and 318 chip stories in the last 90 days; CXMT's climb up the memory stack keeps turning up in both feeds.