YMTC Targets NAND Lead With $4.9 Billion Shanghai IPO Plan
YMTC plans a Shanghai IPO to fund NAND production upgrades and research as it targets Samsung and SK hynix with a 2027 market-share goal.
YMTC's plan to overtake Samsung and SK hynix in NAND flash now depends on a Shanghai listing as much as on fab output, Tom's Hardware reported, citing a Financial Times account of investor meetings before the Chinese memory maker's planned $4.9 billion IPO.
YMTC has filed to raise 33 billion yuan on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market.
Most of the proceeds are assigned to production-line upgrades and research, turning a domestic equity sale into part of China's memory-supply expansion.
The market-share target is steep.
Counterpoint Research put YMTC at about 14% of global NAND shipments in the second quarter, roughly level with Kioxia but still behind Samsung at about 25% and SK hynix plus Solidigm at about 22%.
Reaching first place by the end of 2027 would require the company to add share quickly while larger Korean rivals defend their positions.
Recent financial figures explain why the timing matters.
YMTC became profitable only in 2024, then recorded first-quarter revenue of 47.04 billion yuan, or about $7 billion, and net profit of 33.38 billion yuan.
That quarterly profit was more than double its total net profit for all of 2025.
Margins moved just as sharply.
Gross margin rose from 5.45% in 2023 to 35.3% in 2025 and 76.77% in the first quarter of 2026, while fabs operated at 98.02% capacity utilisation.
The same expansion also carried 96.39 billion yuan of capital outlays on long-term assets, 15.95 billion yuan in cumulative research spending and 50.95 billion yuan of depreciation and amortisation charges.
The offering would issue between 1.98 billion and 2.43 billion A-shares, equal to 10% to 12% of post-offering capital.
That structure implies a valuation range of 275 billion to 330 billion yuan before any first-day trading premium.
China's last major memory listing gives investors a recent comparison.
ChangXin Memory Technologies, the country's leading DRAM maker, completed an $8.6 billion July float, the year's largest Asian IPO, and its shares rose 466% on their first trading day.
By mid-August, CXMT had overtaken Tencent as China's most valuable listed company.
The policy backdrop is central to YMTC's pitch.
The company has been on the U.S. Commerce Department Entity List since December 2022, limiting access to advanced American fab equipment.
NAND production still gives YMTC a different path from leading-edge logic chips because density gains depend on layer counts, stacking architecture and hybrid bonding rather than only on EUV lithography.
YMTC's fifth-generation NAND uses Xtacking to join a 150-layer deck with a 144-layer deck, producing a 294-layer device.
Production lines built around Chinese equipment reduce the remaining exposure to foreign tool limits, while the planned IPO would add a funding source inside Shanghai's capital market.
The expansion leaves the global NAND market watching capacity rather than only technology.
More Chinese output could alter memory supply-demand dynamics for a product with global pricing, and YMTC's 2027 target turns that risk into a timetable for Samsung, SK hynix, Solidigm and Kioxia.
