Kioxia's Market Cap Shrinks by Two-Thirds from Peak as Chinese Chip Competition Weighs
nashnova research
Japanese memory-chip giant Kioxia has lost nearly two-thirds of its market value in four months, falling from roughly ¥60 trillion to about ¥21 trillion (~$134 billion); rising interest rates and the spectre of expanding Chinese NAND capacity are pressing the entire memory sector.
How far has Kioxia fallen?
Kioxia's market cap dropped from a peak of roughly ¥60 trillion to about ¥21 trillion (~$134 billion) — a loss of nearly two-thirds in four months.
In June the company briefly overtook Toyota to become Japan's most valuable listed firm, but the lead did not last.
On Thursday its Tokyo-listed shares fell as much as 14% in a broad semiconductor sell-off. Senior analyst Kazuyoshi Saito at Iwai Cosmo Securities said "negatives are piling up and investors are panic-selling to close out margin positions."
Where are the two pressures coming from?
Pressure one: rising rates. Credit concerns around U.S. cloud firm CoreWeave sent its bond yields sharply higher this week. This means → the market is questioning whether Big Tech's debt-fuelled data-centre buildout is sustainable, and that fear is rippling upstream through the AI infrastructure chain.
Pressure two: Chinese competitors. CXMT announced breakthrough DRAM products for this year, competing head-on with Samsung; Yangtze Memory (YMTC) has signalled plans to expand NAND capacity — NAND being the flash-memory chips used in solid-state drives and data centres.
In plain terms = CXMT makes DRAM and Kioxia makes NAND, so they are not direct rivals. But investors are treating "China's memory-chip rise" as a single risk and selling Kioxia alongside Samsung and SK Hynix.
After a drop this steep, is the stock cheap?
Kioxia now trades at a forward P/E of just 3.7×, far below the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime section's overall 15.4×. Samsung sits at 4.5× and SK Hynix at 3.5× — all at historical lows.
In plain terms = on a valuation basis these memory stocks look very cheap, but "cheap" does not mean "about to rebound." Low multiples can persist as long as sentiment stays negative.
TSMC posted record quarterly results on Thursday, yet Saito said the beat was "probably too late and too modest to turn around chipmaker sentiment broadly."
What is Kioxia itself doing about it?
Kioxia plans to report April-to-September earnings on October 30. The QUICK consensus forecasts net profit of roughly ¥5.54 trillion — about 10× the year-earlier figure.
The company is deepening its partnership with Nvidia, aiming to build product lines less exposed to the memory-market cycle. This means → Kioxia is trying to shift from a "pure NAND cyclical" to an "AI compute supply-chain" player, reducing its dependence on flash-price swings.
The key unresolved variable: when the market's expectations for Chinese NAND capacity expansion peak and begin to clear — that will determine whether Kioxia's share price can truly stabilise.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。