The Tokyo Stock Exchange on Thursday approved the listing of chipmaker Kioxia Holdings Corp. on Oct. 6, in what would be Japan's largest initial public offering so far this year with an estimated 2.1 trillion yen ($19 billion) in market capitalization.

Kioxia, formerly known as Toshiba Memory Holdings Corp., seeks to raise 330 billion yen through the listing on the Tokyo bourse for future investment to better compete with rivals such as South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. in the highly volatile flash memory market.

Struggling Toshiba Corp. sold its chip-making unit to a consortium led by U.S. private equity fund Bain Capital in 2018 to raise cash as part of a restructuring.

Kioxia plans to offer up to 95 million shares, according to the bourse's operator Japan Exchange Group. The book-building process to gauge investors' demand will run from Sept. 18 to 25, with the offer price to be set on Sept. 28.

Toshiba said the same day it will sell 30 million of its shares in Kioxia, reducing its stake from the current 40.6 percent to 32.0 percent.

Kioxia had sought to go public in 2019 but gave it up due to poor market conditions.

The chipmaker reported 1.7 billion yen in net profit in the three months to June, a turnaround from a 95.2 billion yen loss a year earlier.

The 2018 IPO of SoftBank Group Corp's mobile phone unit is the largest in recent years, with a market capitalization of 7 trillion yen based on its opening price.

==Kyodo

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