China’s Self-Reliance Drive Powers 1,200% IPO Surge, Minting A New Billionaire
China’s focus on technology self-reliance has minted a new billionaire as investors pile into the shares of semiconductor component maker Chongqing Genori Technology. The firm’s shares have soared almost 1,200% from its initial public offering price within days of its Wednesday market debut in Shanghai, leading Chairman and CEO Wang Bing to amass a fortune of $4.7 billion, according to Forbes estimates.
The 46-year-old entrepreneur derives his wealth from a company stake. His wife, Xia Bing, a 45-year-old company director tasked with improving efficiency, has a net worth of $490 million based on her own stake, Forbes estimates show. Chongqing Genori didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Established in 2016, the company raised 1.7 billion yuan last week ($254.8 million) by selling 38.8 million shares at 44.6 yuan apiece, with the retail tranche of the IPO oversubscribed more than 6,000 times, according to a stock exchange filing. It intends to use the proceeds for production expansion as well as research and development.
Chongqing Genori is investing about 810 million yuan in a new research center in Shanghai, with construction expected to be completed over the next four years, according to its prospectus. The company also plans to build a production base abroad, Wang told the state-run Shanghai Securities News on Wednesday. The billionaire didn’t specify the location or the timeline.
Investors are clamoring for a piece of the firm, which is viewed as aiding China’s push for self-sufficiency in AI and chipmaking, says Shen Meng, Beijing-based managing director at boutique investment bank Chanson & Co. James Wang, head of China strategy at UBS Investment Bank Research, wrote in a Thursday note that he is generally positive on the country’s AI hardware suppliers due to “strong earnings momentum, fervent retail participation and fresh capital from new IPOs.”
Chongqing Genori develops components and technologies related to vacuum chambers, which are crucial pieces of equipment in semiconductor manufacturing because it provides a vacuum environment for silicon wafers to be processed without contamination from particles and impurities in the air.
This part of the supply chain has long been dominated by foreign companies including California-based Applied Materials and Lam Research, as well as Japan’s Tokyo Electron, according to Chongqing Genori’s prospectus. As the U.S. expands the scope of sanctions against China, which might include not just the sale of high-end chips, but also related parts and aftersale services, local firms must “replace their components with domestically made ones,” the company wrote in its prospectus.
Chongqing Genori’s customers include Shenzhen-listed electronic device makers BOE Technology Group and Tianma Microelectronics. It also supplies the local operations of U.S. tech giants such as Intel, GlobalFoundries and Texas Instruments, according to the prospectus. The company expects revenues to grow by as much as 34.3% year-on-year to 492 million yuan in the first six months of this year, according to preliminary interim results published in its prospectus. Net income is expected to rise by up to 35% to 115 million yuan from the same period a year ago.
Wang is a veteran in the semiconductor industry. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mechatronics from East China Jiaotong University in the southeastern Jiangxi province, he landed a sales job at a Shanghai-based glassmaker. The billionaire departed after one year and spent the following decade working as an engineer or a sales manager at various local semiconductor companies, according to the prospectus.
