YMTC Completes First Phase of IPO Coaching, Could File STAR Market Application as Early as August
Taylor Wilson
Yangtze Memory Technologies (长江存储) has completed its first phase of IPO coaching, with CITIC Securities and CSC Financial fielding a 31-person team. A STAR Market filing could come as early as August — putting China's domestic memory-chip capital push on a concrete countdown.
Why does it take a 31-person coaching team?
CITIC Securities and CSC Financial deployed 31 professionals for the coaching engagement — on par with the 34-person team used for CXMT's (长鑫存储) IPO.
The reason: YMTC's ownership structure is unusually complex. There is no controlling shareholder; six entities each hold more than 1%, spanning state capital, industrial investors, and the National IC Fund.
This means → the coaching team must conduct a full look-through audit — tracing every layer of equity to its ultimate owner. The oversized team is not ceremony; it is necessity.
How tangled is the shareholder map?
Top shareholder Hubei Changsheng Development holds 26.54%; second-largest Wuhan Xinfei Technology holds 25.35%. Together they barely clear half.
China's National IC Fund (phases I and II) holds roughly 23%; Wuhan Optics Valley Capital holds 9.26%; Yangtze Industry Investment Group holds 2.53%.
In plain terms = no single party has outright control. Six state-linked and industrial shareholders each own a slice, and sorting out every party's rights before listing is a major undertaking on its own.
Why are top brokers competing for this mandate?
Under STAR Market rules, a sponsor's proprietary-investment subsidiary must participate in strategic co-investment — buying newly issued shares with its own capital and holding them under lock-up.
This means → if YMTC's post-listing valuation meets expectations, the brokers' co-investment gains could dwarf the underwriting fee — that is the real prize behind the mandate race.
The risk is equally real: memory chips are a deeply cyclical sector, and the co-investment carries a 24-month lock-up. If the cycle turns down, paper gains can evaporate. An industry insider put it bluntly: "The returns everyone is modeling are theoretical — only locked-in profit counts."
How does the August timeline work?
YMTC officially began coaching on May 19. The regulatory minimum is three months, pointing to August at the earliest for coaching acceptance.
Precedent: CXMT completed its entire coaching phase in just over two months, then moved quickly through inquiry, registration, and subscription.
This reflects regulators' clear expectation for how fast a leading domestic memory company should reach the market. Whether YMTC files on schedule in August is the next key milestone to watch.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.